A Suitable Boy
By Vikram Seth
A book equal to Hugo in quotable quotes. My favorite quote among many to choose from: ‘Do not let the bee enter the garden that the moth may not be unjustly killed.’
On the author Vikram Seth: What he does to the color of a character is what Victor Hugo does to color a scene. Each compels you to read and re-read their works just for shear enjoyment of the mosaic of words; paintings upon the readers mind. There comes a point where the reader could care little for the plot as he is pleasantly lost in the picture. The following is an example of quips of drama, romance and humor that barely scratches the surface in representing my point.
• For the most part he treated the patient audience to a speech of exceptional banality. He soared and veered over a vast terrain, and assumed that his droppings would make an intelligible pattern
• Said the professor to the nephew , “economics, such a wasted subject. When are you going to switch subjects?” The nephew’s reply, “I can’t”. “Why not” retorted the Uncle. “I already graduated.”
• For a man who in his friendships and acquaintances looked upon religion and nationality as both significant and irrelevant…
• The joke about super human phenomena and 50 women sitting under a tree perfectly silent
As far as plot goes, this book does a masterful job in tying a Gordian Knot with strains of love, religion, family, politics, international business and then spends one lakh, (a thousand) pages drawing in tension based on loves’ intrigue. What is read on page one will be pulled through to page thirteen hundred and fifty. While the prime question is who Lata will choose as her suitable boy for marriage, there are strands of love’s intrigue between every character in the book. In this book love is not necessarily romance, in fact far from it. There are absolutely no steamy scenes. But it is always placing love on a condition with a mysterious sense of forgiveness. The churn is realized through profound superficial differences that are moored by a distinct sameness in each other. It is the drama of coming to an understanding of another that makes this book a compelling read. In the oneness of mankind, amidst all our differences there is a sameness that makes us One.
In this book as an American of 2012 views India, with its different attire, food, and religion as a very foreign country; we find underneath these veneers exists the very same human drama that plays out here in America. The author illustrates that in the differences between Muslim and Hindi are also sameness’s and friendships between families. And within families we all know too well that each child is a very different person from the next. One an athlete, the other an intellect. One a musician, the other an engineer. One socially energized the other an introvert. Yet what binds a family together in all this diversity is love. In this book the glue for that love is found in the character of Ma, the master puppeteer of a family displaying all the above traits. There is not a mother on earth that would not enjoy this short read of one thousand, three hundred and fifty pages. The question let on by the author is: does love need the crutch of tradition perhaps found in the bedrock of religion to maintain a sense of discipline when our love is on the lam? Or does religion become the agent of strife? Or does love prevail on its own on the basis of human nature. No man is an island.
What is it to be Indian? For the western reader, you certainly get to experience modern day India by living one year in the life of four intertwined families. In addition you get educated. The following conversation between Dipinkar and the Grand Dame at a dinner party is a profound academic existential interpretation of being Indian.
In a question put to Amit by the Grand Dame at a dinner party: What is all this about “being” and the birds and the boats and the river of life – that we find in Indian poetry – the great Tagore excluded; his fundamental construct of being is the square-the four stages of life – love, wealth, duty, and final liberation. Even the four arms of our ancient symbol, the swastika, so sadly abused of late…yes it is the square and the square alone that is the fundamental construct of our spirituality.
a. ..the elemental paradigm – and I would never have said construct – our ancient civilization is of course the Trinity … I don’t mean the Christian trinity…all that seems so crude somehow - but Trinity as Process and Aspect – Creation and Preservation and Destruction – yes the Trinity is the elemental paradigm of our civilization.
b. ---the primeval texture of Indian philosophy is that of Duality---yes Duality---The warp and weft of our ancient garment, the sari itself – a single length of cloth which yet swaths our Indian womanhood.
c. --- the intrinsic essence of our being here in India is a Oneness, yes, a Oneness of Being, an ecumenical assimilation of all that pours into this great subcontinent of ours. Its Unity that governs our souls, here in this ancient land.
d. ---No no no said the Grand Dame; Not Unity but Zero, Nullity itself, is the guiding principle of our existence. I would never used the term intrinsic essence – for what is an essence if it is not intrinsic?
I muse not only the fundamental elements of the four points of view, but the nuance in the framing of each view. I find that framing sort of dialogue in my every day life with Indians . It very much an Indian trait, where as we Americans are shorter on words to express ourselves.
The essence of Hindi, from the Gita:
2. Contacts with matter make us feel
3. Heat and cold, pleasure and pain
4. Arjuna, you must learn to endure
5. Fleeting things – they come and go
6. When these cannot torment a man,
7. When suffering and joy are equal
8. For him and he has courage,
9. He is fit for immortality.
10. Nothing of non-being comes to be
11. Nor does being cease to exist;
12. The boundary between these two
13. Is seen by men who see reality
The Muslim – Hindi cross over permeates the book. Mann (Hindu) falls in love with Saeda Bai (Muslim). Lata (Hindu) and Kabir (Muslim) fall in love. Mann and Frioz (Muslim) are best friends. Maheesh Kapor the head of the Prim Niva House (Hindu) And Nawab Sahib the head of the Batair House (Muslim) were best of friends and covered for each other in political and police scraps. Mann stays with Rasheed’s family (Muslim) and is embraced by all the Muslim villagers. The embrace is mutual. Maheesh Kapoor finds his primary constituency in politics to be Muslim and this is not a problem. The reader comes away from the book with a real sense that it has only been tradition, borne not in religious beliefs, but religious rituals, that is the chief protagonist to the divide between Hindu and Muslim. The most profound example is the religious ceremonies that happened to fall on the same date in 1952. Each celebrated the victory of their anointed one over some foe. In Bampur India this victory played out in real life rioting finding Mann coming to life saving rescue of Frioz against a Hindu mob. The people above all things that make the news at individual and family level have a deep and intertwined love for each other in their toils through life. There is an interdependency and from that need for one another is cultivated a deep respect and even love for each other. The differences are superficial. The sameness is not to be over looked.
While the title of the book drives a plot towards finding a suitable boy for Lata, the theme of the book is life in India in 1951/52. We all know India today to be ripped with politics and most would characterize Indian politics as corrupt. The prime issue of the year of 51 was the Abloishiment of Zamindars Act. Zamindars are akin to what we know in the West as Duke, Earls, the Irish simply called them landloards. Nawab Sahib a Muslim zaminder, the chief opponent of the Bill as this book describes it, was compelled to admit the question of competence. Most zaminders – himself alas, perhaps included – could hardly administer even their own estates and were fleeced by their munchis (the zaminders’ stong man) and money lenders. For most landlords the primary question was not how to increase their income but how to spend it.
As the storyline of the book, through character portrayal, the Anti Zamindar Actleads the reader to see the issue as Muslim-v-Hindu issue. However there were many Hindi landloards as well. Essenentially the Congress Party of India saw as a key to progress to give the land to the many as opposed to the few. Abolishment of zamandari meant reallocating land to those who worked it as opposed to those who inherited it. The following speech on the floor is a snippet of the Muslim-Hindu dichotomy around this issue. Begum Abida Khan, a Muslim Minister who resorted to God has her higher authority, to the House: O may tell you that the music (the debate) is not very pleasant: it is monotonous without being soothing. It is not the voice of reason or reasonableness but the voice of majority power and self-righteousness. You are dispossessing eight lakh (a unit of measure) people, and openly inviting communism. The people will soon find out who you are.
I am curious as to the ramifications of this Bill. India saw a monumental shift in the beginning of self rule towards communism. If it’s true that the zaminders were incompetent, was it smart to replace them with an equally incompetent government? Would drawing a parallel to Pakistan shed light on the answer? Did Pakistan take the same Abolition of Zamindar course? And finally, since India has progressed and Pakistan has not, how much relevancy does the Abolition of Zaminder (essentially feudal society) weigh? If I were to characterize India I would call it a Democracy, albeit with much corruption. If I were to Characterize Pakistan, it would call it a constant feud of people in a feudal society. I will say I have come to appreciate the Commercial Code we have in America. One that Obamacare violates.
The following quote summarizes it succinctly. Rasheed (Muslim) said to Mann (Hindu)…But I have lived in the village all my life, and I have seen the whole system. I know how it works. The zaminders – and my family is not so extraordinary to be an exception to this – the zaminders do nothing to but make their living from the misery of others; and they try to force their sons into the same ugly mold as themselves.
When the case is brought to the Indian Supreme Court, the petitioners suggest their referring to the American Constitution when looking at the delegation of authority. Apparently in 1951 and in this book, the Indian high court perceived it unconstitutional for government to delegate. Yet in America we have a complete body of administrative (delegated) law. I hoped to have read further that the delegation referred to in Zaminderi is outside any body of Indian law. What seems to escape our modern society is that many issues are too complex to for legislators and so they do delegate. It is in that delegation that a new version of zamindarism takes flight. Nancy Pelosi signed off on a Bill that she DID NOT Read. Obama signed a bill that he DID NOT READ. They have delegated this to HRSA, another alphabet soup agency that regulates how we live and do business. Yet like in India of 1951 the implementation of the bill is left to interpretation by ADMINISTRATORS. If this is unclear to the western reader, I point to the Affordable Housing Act that led to our crash of the American economy in 2008. The chief agents to this collapse were Fannie Mea and Freddie Mac, administrators of a short sighted bill. To my opening theme, let me reiterate it here. In our superficial differences we are ironically much alike.
Woven through the whole book is the poetic mind and expression of India. By page 227 the reader comes to appreciate the poetry and poetic expression, that I have found common with Indians. I turned back to the Table of Contents and note that it is in the form of a series of couplets…a trait running through the book. The Indian word ‘ghazhal’ is now a fond word with me. It is one of the principal poetic forms which the Indo-Persian-Arabic civilization offered to the eastern Islamic world. Ghazhals are a poetic form of rhyming couplets a refrain with each line sharing the same meter. A ghazhal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain.
And finally to Lata’s choice: in a conversation with Malati, the summation of her choice in whom to marry drew on the mind of an Indian bride of the 1950’s. Interesting enough I saw the choice, though with varied nuance implanted by culture driven situation, to follow one common denominator. The real material question being who will bring me a good life, may outweigh to whom does my true love belong. The rationale being that from a good life, love could grow.
• Kabir was a Muslim and Lata’s true love. Being a Hindu in India in 1951 made the prospects of a life together impossible. But more-so what weighed on Lata’s decision was Kabir’s arrogant confidence. The arrogance came mostly from her interpretation of a good looking accomplished young man. This mesmerized her and thus immobilized her. She feared she would end up a meaningless addition to her husband.
• Amit was a well placed Hundu. Life with him would have been quite comfortable as Amit was well connected in high society Amit was lost in his poetry and novel writing and she feared that she would be lost in his life.
• Harseh was a hard working ‘blue-collar’ cobbler. He earned his educational credentials on his own. He came up through the ranks of the shoe factory he worked at. He earned all his promotions. He was confident and yet humbled himself before Lata.
So what is love here in the material world? In Kabir love struck her soul, there was a mystery of unconditional acceptance of the other. Upon the canvas of cultural difference that was rooted deep in tradition of the family that would only draw conflict. But more-so was the pedestal that Lata put not Kabir, but her love for Kabir on. Upon a canvas of conflict could she live up to her own expectations. She resigned herself to Harseh because first her mother would be happy, second she would have a comfortable life that she could adapt to. And finally she felt with the first to bases covered she could find a way to love Haresh. She surrendered her true love of her soul, phenomena of a separate reality. It would be a reality that she would touch in her own quite moments as she communes with God as a foundation of peace in her heart. She knew that no matter which direction fate would take her and Kabir, though it be in different direction, the love though never really allowed to see the light of day, would forever live on.
Dog eared pages:
Page 996: The Nawab Sahib frowned. ‘ Kapoor Sahib,’ he said, ‘ I am less concerned about my own house than those that depend on me. The people of Baitar expect me to put on a proper show for our festivals, especially for Moharram. I will have to keep that up in some fashion. I have certain other expenses – the hospital and so on, the monuments, the stables, musicians like Ustad Majeed Khan who expect to be retained by me a couple times a year, poets who depend on me, various endowments, pensions, God – and my munshi – who knows what else. At least my sons don’t make vast demands on me; they’re educated, they have their own professions, they aren’t
Page 1022: ‘Well,’ said Abdus Salam in passing, ‘ Pakistan was a good thing.’ Seeing Mahesh Kapoor looked shocked, he said, ‘For one things, with the Muslin League wielding so much power in an undivided India neither could you have got rid of princely states like Marh nor forced through the abolition of zamindari. Everyone knows this, yet but no one says so.
My comment: And this lay the difference in economic success between . Pakistan in 2012 still practices a version of zamindari, where as India’s system as corrupt as it me be accused of, does all it can to promote individual pursuit of happiness by taking away the barriers of fiefdom rule. In India there is no demand for a fealty towards what we western people term as Dukes or Earls. In India you are not bound to your master or your master bound to you as demonstrated in the dialogue on page 996.
Page 1023: “Well instead of getting a commanders battlecry or even a pragmatist’s plan, we got a speech about Unity of the Heart. We should think above divisions, splits, cliques! We must all pull along as a team, a family, a battalion. Dear Cacha Nehru, I felt like saying, this is India, Hindustan, Bhrat, the country where faction was invented before zero. If even the heart is divided into four parts can you expect is Indians to divide ourselves into less than four hundred?
Page 1036: ‘Im not., said Frioz, ‘In fact – and you’d better not tell anyone I said this – but I am not a great fan of Hussain. And Muawiyah, who got him killed, wasn’t as dreadfull as we make him out to be. After all, the succession was quite a mess before that, with most of the caliphs getting assassinated. Once Muawiyah set things up dynastically, Islam was able to consolidate itself as an empire. If he hadn’t , everything would have fallen back into petty tribes bickering with each other and there’s be no Islam to argue about.
Page 1081: Or perhaps it was that, refusing to be turned and off like a tap by requests for intercession, Brahma at last refused to deliver what was asked of him by millions of upraised hands, and therefore fell out of favor. It is rare for religious feeling to be entirely transcendent, and Hindus as much as anyone else, perhaps more-so, are eager for terrestrial, not merely post terrestrial, blessings
Page 1220: Mrs. Mahesh Kapoor was dead, and felt nothing, this ash of hers and sandalwood and common wood could be left to the doms at the cremation ghat to sift for the few pieces of jewellery which had melted with her body and were theirs by right. Fat, ligament, muscle, blood, hair affection , pity, anxiety, illness all were no more. She had dispersed. She was the garden at Prem Nivas, she was Veena’s love for music, Prans’ asthma, Mann’s generosity, the survival of some refugees four years ago, the neem leaves that would preserve quilts stored in the great zinc trunks of Prem Nivas, the moulting feather of some pond-heron, a small un-rung brass bell, the memory of decency in an indecent time, the temperament of Bhaskar’s great-grandchildren.
Friday, June 1, 2012
India After Gandhi
India After Gandhi
By Ramachandra Guha
While sitting at a bar over a couple of beers, I was telling my son what I learned from this book. In this book I learned about India’s founder’s insistence on democracy. I learned about their insistence on governing with a value for secularism. I learned that formulating a national identity was required to bring unity to a 28 States. This was packed in to 700 plus pages of factual detail blended with a coloring of the personal views of many active participants focusing largely around Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. While I was sharing my views, a guy standing next to me fist made a claim that Indians hate Mahatma Gandhi because he slowed down the Indian movement for independence. He then made the assertion that India’s Independence was not won but only handed to them and therefore not as legitimate as what occurred in the American independence. And finally he asserted that nationalism is bad for any people. This came from a History major. So the first words in my mind were ugly American arrogance, hubris, and ignorance. My recommendation to him was for him to read this book. Apparently after acquiring a Bachelors in History he saw no need. To all the rest of my readers, this can be a case made for the ugly American. However in his defense and in this context, the ugliest American leading the way is our own Richard Nixon who was very indignant towards India and Indira Gandhi personally. I can only guess that college’s place a biased view rout from history’s practice to not call it history until 20 years has elapsed and therefore history majors, without studying current affairs are caught flat footed and behind the times. I too was guilty of ignorance until I read this book. It is only lately that the United States has opened up to India. It is only lately since 1990 that India has found sound international footing as an economic power. In response, GW Bush was the first American President to visit India. It’s my hope and recommendation that all Americans follow suit and this book is a great bridge to understanding today’s India.
This book lays it out there. India’s accomplishments had its challenges, its bright side and its dark side. It is far from perfect, yet because of its secular based democracy and its national unity of over one billion people, there is nothing but potential for national good. On this record, India has never waged a preemptive war on any other country. In fact at the core of India’s governance is to manage themselves on Indian terms alone. Of its domestic problems there is a disparity in people caused by a caste system, religion, language and the cultures that are derived from the previous three. Where Mahatma Gandhi had cast the mold for India to find its independence in a secular democracy it was the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, of like mind with Gandhi, who poured raw material into mold. Nehru ruled over India with a socialistic hand in a parliamentary government through its first 15 years. This period was followed by an equal amount of time under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi daughter Indira Gandhi where in turn her son ruled over India. It is clearly seen through the succession of the Gandhi line that Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy was at the heart of every Indian as the father of their country.
Guha makes it clear that India found its own way un-assisted by outside influence. Unlike Pakistan, India did not seek out foreign assistance from superpower governments. Guha indirectly makes a point that by turning up its nose to the United States, it left India strong and of independent mind. India did find a strong relationship with the USSR but only commercially, albeit the USSR made every attempt to expand her communism. The USSR was marginally successful, where three of India’s States are still lead through pertinent communist parties. The unique reality of this is these three States live in relative harmony with India’s other twenty-four States. During this period India’s relationship with the Unites States was indifferent from India’s perspective and outright rude from the American perspective. Richard Nixon was extremely rude to Indira Gandhi in her visit to the White House, and his disparaging remarks towards her and India are what reverberated down to the American masses. Hence to this day there are generations of American people with the wrong impression of today’s India. This ugly American is only a product of his village, and he can’t alone be charged as guilty.
With Regard to Nehru’s policy, fate and philosophy forced a socialistic agenda. The lower Castes were first and foremost in need of a voice. It was that voice backed by the guiding hand of Nehru and a few other key aids that have given the lower Caste population a venue to climb the ladder. While that social prejudice still exists in many circles, the lower Cast is integrating in to a contributing force in India. They are now contributing at higher level jobs and thus becoming consumers that will churn the economy upwards. It is only a matter of time and this powerful group in terms of shear numbers alone will position India on favorable footing.
Nehur’s ambivalence to strong central power was positioned as not so greedy to take anything away from the States. Imagine our forefathers giving voice to our American Indians allowing them power in certain States, rather than on reservations. Imagine the center allowing autonomous control of the many intricate cultural issues. Imagine at the same time promoting a sense of nationalism for which all Indians could identify. Many of Nehru’s social projects were to the benefit of interstate commerce and therefore the improved standard of living in a united India. India also faced a war with China and three wars with Pakistan. All were provoked by their neighbors. Nagaland and Kashmir represent the battle ground for the most part. While each State could have argued for their independence, they each rose to a national ascendance to India, albeit when the boundaries were drawn in 1948, they already were Indian from a legal point of view. Nehru faced similar challenges in the central “Princely States”, where he created unity through socializing natural resources. Nehru’s toughest nut to crack was and still is for his successors is the Hindu/Muslim tension. Oddly enough While Muslims are in the minority population-wise, they all prefer to stay and vote in India. At present they have a strong footing in power at State and Central level, they are also well recognize in the cinema and sports circles.
On Kashmir, it is India’s to hold and Pakistanis to attack. The author explains in numerous different chapters where the fog lay. It comes out in the book that in the beginning a dominant figure was Sheikh Abdullah who had the hearts of the Kashmiri’s While possibly true in his heart to Kashmir’s he believed in accession to India, he apparently abused his position by absorbing his destined power to unite the people around him as opposed to India. It was an ambition for power. In this fog he created Pakistan took license to launch numerous incursions over the boarder, many of which escalated to the level of declared war. However he makes no assertion that the boundaries drawn at the formation of India had this State inside of India.
Within Kashmir the majority of the people are Muslim. However in their minds it was never a choice to be either Pakistani or Indian, but rather to be autonomous of the Indian central government. There has been at times an option to be its own sovereign country but the people elected to stay united with India and not be the trampling crossroads of international wars. In 2002 75% of Kashmi’s people voted which clearly indicates the voice of the people, where election results produced Sikh Prime Minister and Muslim president. But still today, there is always the ever presence of insurgent activity spilling over the boarder to capture once again a land that has always belonged to India. In India, anywhere, the Hindu violence toward the Muslim in was/is largely unorganized emotional reaction of the majority upon the minority at community level. The Muslim violence was/is a calculated by the neighboring State of Pakistan an organized Holy War not just for Kashmir, but for some for the complete destruction of India.
At the end of the chapter on ‘Democracy in Disarray’ Guha draws a contrast between the two leaders of government through the better part of India’s first thirty years. Both were of social mind. But that is where their similarities ended. Where Nehru built a party and a country through unity and democracy, his daughter moved so far left that she could trust no one. Where Nehru was uniting the various Indian States via cooperative water and land management projects for example, Indira was isolating herself from her party of which caused the parties to plot against each other to the detriment of the people. While Indira was decisive, in war it helped her win both the war and her countrymen’s favor. It was that same decisiveness without listening to her political advisers that led to discord in her party and divisiveness in the country. The hard move further left destroyed the political integrity of Indian due process and gave birth to a bedrock of corruption that thrives to this day. Indira did not strangle her country to death as she did hand her imposed dictatorship back to the people after two years of emergency rule. While Indians themselves distain the corruption in politics, where politics has become a family business, it is the legacy of Indira Gandhi. Where India’s democracy will thrive through any storm is the legacy of Nehru.
The reason why democracy will thrive is India’s move to the right. In the wake of emergency rule Indria Gandhi was assassinated by a rival minority Sikh party member. It was her first son Rajiv who assumed power through election that began a significant move to the right, releasing more and more government controls allowing capitalism to flourish. This in conjunction with the breakup of the USSR caused India’s shift in business to America. With a capitalistic mindset and a capitalistic set of trading partners India now has the right chemistry to become a prime mover on the world’s stage.
When comparing India with the United State; they are both democratic republics. There is a divergence in balance however in the words republic and democracy. Because of India’s structure of Parliament and through policy in Delhi, their States have much more autonomy in governing themselves. Also the way they elect representation to send to Delhi draws a much more variegated meeting of national interests. In India the State's interest comes first. In our United States the federal interests come first. Hence in India socialism became an ideal that best knitted the interests and welfare of all people and therefore melded a disparate people under one nation. I think the key to success, after reading this book, are Guha’s choice words variegated interests meeting of national interests. I believe that there will be a time here in America where we look to India to reunite our people. History has many examples where a country’s leader has taken their people to war, where there is an alleged agenda to bring unity of the people around said leader. In Germany for example we saw that with Bismarck and then again in Hitler. It is my sincere hope that American unity is not found in war but in India’s example of allowing our great country find its republic roots and hand power back to the States and thrive off of a variegated national interest vested in State politics where it may seem we succession is eminent but in that context is indeed our reason to unite.
My favorite quote, of this book is as follows: To quote a European observer of India’s first election it was;’ perhaps the most motley a assemblage in any quarter of this orb’; to quote another, it was ‘a true centre of the diverse varieties of types of mankind far surpassing the mix of nationalities of Cairo and Constantinople’. Through a national identity under the flag of India, what was written after their first election holds true to this day. So when an ugly American claims diversity in America to be one of its strengths, he must appreciate that in India there is that same virtue times three. If indeed there is power in numbers, as you gloat in apparent world hegemony, beware of the real Asian tiger. And know he is your friend so treat him as such.
Notes
As I copied excerpts of the book I took note of the authors use of quotations, interjecting the exact words of the people chronicling the events at that time. The evidence in the back of the book holds almost 100 pages of notes, which in my mind is a disciplined method to avoid being accused of re-writing history.
Page 58: In truth, both politicians and bureaucrats had their indispensable allies the most faceless of all humans: the people
Page 65 On August 14 several shops and offices in Poonch had flown Pakistani flags, indicating their allegiance lay to that country, and not to the unaffiliated state of Kashmir. In the following weeks clashes between Dogra troops and local protesters were reported. By the beginning of September dozens of Poonch men had equipped themselves with rifles from ‘informal sources in Pakistan’. The also has established a base in the Pakistani town of Murree, here were collected arms and ammunition to be smuggled across the boarder in Kashmir.
Page 68: On the morning of the 26th Menon flew back to Delhi, accompanies by the prime minister of Kashmir. Another meeting of the Defence Committee was convened. In attendance apart from Mountbatten, Nehru and Patel, was Sheikh Abdullah, who happened to be in Delhi that day. Both he and Mahjan urged that India immediately send troops to push back the invaders. Mountbatten suggested, however, that it would be best to secure Hari Singh’s accession to India before committing forces to his defense.
Page 77: Whether or not Abdullah was India’s man, he certainly was not Pakistan’s. In April 1948 he described that country as an unscrupulous and savage enemy’. He dismissed Pakistan as a theocratic state and the Muslim League as pro-prince rather than pro people.
Page 100: Like the integration of the princely states, the rehabilitation of refugees was a political problem unprecedented in nature and scope. The migrants into India from Pakistan, wrote one of their number, were ‘like the fallen autumn leaves in the wind or bits of stray newspaper flying hither and thither in the blown dust’. For those who have come away safe in limb and mind are without any bearings and without any roots.
Page 105:
Thus the All-India Varnashrama Swarajya (based in Calcutta asked that the constitution ‘be based on the principles laid down in ancient Hindu works’ The prohibition of cow-slaughter and the closing down of abattoirs was particularly recommended The low-caste groups demanded an end to their ill treatment by upper-caste people and reservation of separate seats on the basis of their population in legislature, government bodies, etc. Linguistic minorities asked for freedom of speech in their mother tongue and the redistribution f provinces on linguistic basis. Religious minorities asked for special safeguards.
Page 109: The Hindi scholar Raghu Vira claimed that ancient India was the originator of the Republican system of government and spread this system to other parts of the world.
Page 111: For the horrific communal violence of 1946 and 1947 bore witness to the need for a stron centre. In the words of Kazi Syed Kazimuddin, ‘everybody is not Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’ ( in the respect of his commitment to inter-religious harmony)
Page 120: Ambedker ended his speech with three warnings about the future. The first concerned the place of popular protest in a democracy. There was no place for blody revolution, of course, but in his view there was no room for Gandhian methods either. We must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha [popular protest] Under an autocratic regime, there might be some justification for them, but not now, when constitutional methods of redress are available.
Page 130: ‘We have to treat our minorities in exactly the same way as we treat the Majority’, insisted Nehru. ‘indeed, fair treatment is not enough; we have to make them feel that they are so treated.’ Now,’ in view of the prevailing confusion and the threat of false doctrine, it has become essential that the Congress should declare its policy in this matter in the clearest and most unambiguous terms.’
Page 141: The sentiment was Gandhi-like, and indeed Nehru’s next major speech was delivered to Delhi on the afternoon of 2 October, the Mahatma’s birthday. To a mammoth crowd he spoke in Hindustani about government’s determination to abolish both untouchability and landlordism. Once more he identified communalists as the chief enemies, who ‘will be shown no quarter’, and ‘overpowered with all our strength.’
Page 147: On the eve of the polls Sukmar Sen suggested they constitutes ‘the biggest experiment in democracy in human history.’ A veteran Madras editor was less neutral: he complained that a ‘very large majority [will] exercise votes for the first time; not many know what a vote is, why they should vote, and whom they should vote for; no wonder the whole adventure is rated the biggest gamble in history.’
Just as skeptical as the All Souls man was the Organizer, a weekly published by revanchist Hindu group, the RSS. This hoped that Hawaharlal Nehru ‘would live to confess the failure of universal adult franchise in India.’ It claimed that Mahatma Gandhi had ‘warned against this precipitate dose of democracy’, and that Rajendra Prasad, was ‘skeptical about this leap in the dark.’ Yet Nehru, ‘who has all along lived by slogans and stunts, would not listen.’
Page 149: A visiting Turkish journalist focused on the content of the election rather than its form. He admired Nehru’s decision not to follow other Asian countries in taking ‘ the line of least resistance’ by developing a dictatorship with centralization of power and intolerance of dissent and criticism’. The prime minister had ‘wisely kept away from such temptation’.
Page 191: To quote a European observer it was;’ perhaps the most motley a assemblage in any quarter of this orb’; to quote another, it was ‘a true centre of the diverse varieties of types of mankind far surpassing the mix of nationalities of Cairo and Constantinople’.
Page 198: But once Nehru conceded Andhra, and set the States Reorganization Commission, it was inevitable that the country as a whole would be reorganized on the basis of language.
Page 205: From Japan and Russia the NPC took lesson that countries that industrialized late had to depend crucially on state intervention. …In the early stages of industrialization, they argued, it was necessary that the ‘State should exercise in the interests of the community a considerable measure of intervention and control.’ Indeed, ‘and enlargement of the positive as well as preventative functions of the State is essential to any large-scale economic planning.’
Page 211: Planning was thus a ‘might co-operative effort of all the people of India. Nehru hoped that the new projects would be solvent to dissolve the schisms of caste and religion, community and region.
Page 224: This consensus was shared by large sections of the ruling class as well. In their Bombay Plan the leading industrialist had asked for an “enlargement of the positive functions of the State’. The approvingly quoted Cambridge economist A.C. Pigou’s view that freedom and planning were entirely compatible. Indeed, these big businessmen went so far as to state that ‘the distinction between capitalism and socialism has lost much of its significance from a practical standpoint.
Page 228: As it happened, during the last years of their rule the British had belatedly initiated framing of uniform code for Hindus. This sought to reconcile the prescriptions of the two principal schools of law – the Mitakshara and the Dayabhaga – and their numerous local variations. A committee had been set up in 1941 chaired by Sir B.N. Rau, who was also to play a crucial role in drafting the Indian Constitution. The committee toured India, soliciting a wide spectrum of Hindu opinion on the changes they proposed. Their progress was interrupted by the war, but by 1946 that had prepared a draft of a personal law code to be applied to all Hindus.
Page 241: Others viewed this caution more cynically. As Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee pointed out in the provisional Parliament, ‘it is nobody’s case that monogamy is good for Hindus alone or Buddhists alone or for Sikhs alone?’ Why not have a separate bill prescribing monogamy for all citizens? Having asked the question, Dr. Mookerjee supplied this answer: ‘I am not going to tread on this question because I know the weakness of the promoters of this bill. They dare not touch the Muslim minority. There will be so much opposition coming from throughout India that government will not dare to proceed with it. But of course you can proceed with the Hindu community in any way you like and whatever the consequences may be.’
Page 257: Ten days after he assumed power he visited Jammu, where he spoke to a large crowd, assuring them that ‘ties between Kashmir and India are irrevocable. No power on earth can separate the two.’ Next speaking in Srinagar Sheikh Abdullah played directly in to the hands of foreign invaders but entertaining the idea of an independent Kashmir.’ That said was a dangerous game, pregnant with disastrous consequence for Kashmir, India and Pakistan. Since Kashmir lacked resources to defend itself, independence was a ‘crack-brained idea’, calculated only to make the state a center of superpower intrigue, it was an idea that can devastate the people.
Page 289: These (socialistic moves) were important measures, helping hundreds of thousands of poor peasants, but still somewhat short of Red catechism prescribed. The contradiction was resolved by recourse to the ‘stages’ theory of classic Marxism. It was argued that rural India was still ‘semi-feudal’. All no-feudal classes were to be rallied around the proposed reforms which, when in place, would unleash agrarian capitalism, the next necessary stop in the high road to socialism.
Page 298: In May 1959, and touching eighty Rajaji launched a new political party, the Swatantra Party. This party focused its criticism on the ‘personality cult’ around the prime minister, and on economic policies of the ruling Congress. Its founding statement asked for a ‘proper decentralized distribution of industry through the nurturing of ‘competitive enterprise’ and, in agriculture, for encouragement of ‘self-employed peasant proprietor who stands for initiative and freedom’. It rejected the ‘techniques pf so called socialism and the ‘bringing into being of Statism’
Page 319: This ( the Chinese reason to invade Kashmir) was clearly because of their need to have speedy access to Tibet.
Page 325: The following year, in 1961, the writer Aldous Huxley visited India after a gap of thirty-five years. He was overwhelmed by what he found, namely, ‘the prospect of overpopulation, underemployment, growing unrest’.
Page 332: In the event it was the enemy who acted first. A phony war, which had lasted all of three years, was made very real on the night of 19/20 October, when Chinese simultaneously launched an invasion in both the eastern and western sectors. The blitzkrieg across the Himalaya had come as ‘Pragmatist’ had predicted it would.
Page 334: Nehru’s speech might be read as a belated acknowledgment of the correctness of Vallaabhbhai Patel’s warning of 1950: that communism in China was an extreme expression of nationalism, rather than its nullification.
Page 352: On April 28, the day before Abdullah was due to arrive in Delhi, the Jana Singh held a large procession in the capital. The marchers shouted anti-Abduallah and anti-Nehru slogans and demanded that government of India abrogate Article 370 and declare Kashmir to be an ‘integral and indivisible part of India’ (which it already was as the article was intended to bring a peaceful resolution to unrest cause by Abdullaha’s antics.)
Page 369: The prime minister acknowledged that ‘Pakistan is pursuing a policy of utter callousness in this matter’. However, he insisted the ‘we cannot copy the methods or ideals of Pakistan.” The have declared themselves openly to be an Islamic State believing in the two-nation theory We reject the theory and call ourselves a secular State giving full protection to all religions.
Page 371: Among Tyanji’s other suggestions were that Muslims ask for technical and commercial education, rather then merely study the humanities and join the ranks of the educated employed. Even as regards ti humanistic learning, he deplored attempts to keep ‘our Islamic culture…in a state of fossilized purity.’
Page 383: On Untouchables: Recalling the reactionary forces which came into play after partition, the editor remarked that ‘had Nehru shown the slightest weakness, these forces would have turned the country into a Hindu state in which minorities…could have not lived with any measure of safety or security’. It was also to Nehru;s credit that he insisted that Untouchables be granted full rights, such that ‘in public life and in all government action, the equality of man would be scrupulously maintained in the secular state of India.’
Page 401:…This is the difference between India and Pakistan. Where as Pakistan proclaims herself to be an Islamic State and uses religion as a political factor, we Indians have freedom to follow whatever religion we may choose [and] worship in any way we please. So far as politics are concerned, each of us are as much Indian as the other.
Page 403: What Shastri gave India Life said, ‘was mainly a mood- a new steeliness and sense of national unity.’ The Chinese war had brought the country to a state of near collapse, but this time, when war came, ‘everything worked – the trains ran, the army held fast, there was no communal rioting. The old moral pretentiousness, the disillusion and drift, the fear and dismay were gone.’
Page 425: (on Calcutta’s move to the left)These stoppages created a ripple in the British press, in part because many of the great Calcutta firms were British owned, in part because this had once been the capital of the Raj. ‘West Bengal expects more lawlessness’ ran one headline; ‘Riot stops opening of West Bengal Assembly’ ran another. The response of many factory owners, Indian as well as European, was to shut down their units. Other shifted their business elsewhere, in a process of capital flight that served to displace Calcutta as the leading center of Indian industry.
Page 433: (on parallels between the Raj and Nehru) Here the parallels end. Seeking to unite a divided India, Nehru articulated am ideology that rested on four main pillars. First, there was democracy, the freedom to choose ones friend and speak one’s mind ( and in the language of ones choice) – above all the freedom to choose ones leaders through regular elections based on universal adult franchise. Second, there was secularism, the neutrality of te state in matters of religion and its commitment to maintaining a social peace. Third, there was socialism, the attempt to augment productivity while ensuring a more egalitarian distribution of income (and social opportunity). Fourth there was non-alignment, the placement of India beyond and above the rivalries of the Great Powers. Among the less compelling, but not necessarily less significant, elements of this worldview were the conscious cultivation of a multiparty system…
Page 436: Speeches made by Mrs. Gandhi after her re-election show her identifying explicitly with the poor and vulnerable. Speaking to Lok Sabha in February 1968, she stressed the problems of landless labor, expressed her concern for all the minorities of India’ and defended the public sector from criticisms that it was not making profit ( her answer that it did not need to, since it was building a base for economic development).
Page 443: They could see what bound the varied religions, races and regions: namely a shared constitution and a tradition of regular elections. Nor did they think the challenges of the states a threat to national unity.
Page 457: On her November visit Mrs. Gandhi had two meetings with President Nixon. Kissinger had the impression that this was ‘a classic dialogue of the deaf’. Nixon said that the US would not be party to the overthrow Yahya Khan, and warned India that consequences of military action were incalculably dangerous’. Mrs. Gandhi answered that it was the Pakistanis who spoke of waging a ‘holy war’. She also pointed out that while West Pakistanis had ‘dealt with Bengali people in a treacherous and deceitful way and…always relegated them to an inferior role’, India, ‘on the other hand, has always reflected a degree of forbearance toward its own separatists elements.
Page 460: Said Nixon: “The Indians are such poor pilots they can’t even get off the ground,’ he had claimed in October. His hope now was that ‘the liberals are going to look like jerks because the Indian occupation of East Pakistan is going to make the Pakistani on look like child’s play.’
Page 462: The left-wing jurist V. R. Krishna Iyer saw in the recent movements a progressive maturation of Indian leadership; ‘What in Gandhian days was a vague creed was spelt out in Nehru’s time as an activist social philosophy, and became, under Mrs. Gandhi’s leadership a concrete and dynamic program of governmental action.
Page 467: On 15 August 1972 India celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of Independence. A special midnight sitting was held in the Lok Sabha where the prime minister recalled the struggle for freedom from the 1857 rebellion to the present, marking the major landmarks along the way. The Indian quest, said Mrs. Gandhi, ‘has been friendship with all, submission to none.’ The next morning she addressed the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort. ‘India is stronger today that it was twenty-five years ago’, said the prime minister. ‘ Our democracy has found roots, our thinking is clear, our goals are determined, our paths are planned to achieve goals and our unity is more solid today than ever before.’ ‘Nations march ahead’, insisted Mrs. Gandhi, ‘not by looking at others but with self-confidence, determination and unity.’
Page 486: The Party President, L. K. Advani, claimed that Abdullah still ‘wanted to use the instrument of power to pursue his ambition of an independent Kashmir.’ Others saw the matter very differently. After the Sheikh was sworn in as chief minister on 25 February, the Indian Express called it an ‘epochal event in the history of free India’. Abdullah’s return to his old post, twenty-three years after he had been forced to leave it, was a tribute to the resilience and maturity of Indian democracy, for it is only in a true democratic set-up that even the most serious differences can be harmonized and reconciliations effected within the framework of common loyalty to country.
Page 495: These were the signs of a creeping dictatorship. Like military men who seize power via a coup. Mrs. Gandhi claimed to have acted to save the country from itself. And like them, she went on to say that, while she had denied her people freedom, she would give them bread in exchange.
Page 500: Mrs. Gandhi, and Congress, were now supreme al over the land. When the art historians Mildred and W.G. Archer went to meet her in March 1976, the prime minister expressed satisfaction with her progress of the emergency. The new regime, she told them, ‘had made the State Ministers shake in their shoes’. This was ‘long over due and was excellent’, for ‘too much devolution [was] fatal to India’. ‘I have to keep India together’, insisted Mrs. Gandhi.
Page 508: The India and/vs democracy was discussed most vigorously in the British press. The political class in the United Kingdom was divided; while some MPs signed the Free JPappeal, Mrs Gandhi’s regime was endorsed by, among others, Labor’s Michael Foot…they concluded that the emergency was, on balance, beneficial to its people. Wrote a conservative; that the emergency was far less oppressive than the Times reported it to be,
Page 523: The prime minister told the interviewer that the Janta men ‘are only united against me, but not on any positive program’. The name could not hide the same old aim, which is to get rid of Indira Gandhi. In his interview JP claimed that ‘the Janta Party is no greater hotchpotch than the Congress’ For the ruling party had within it all types of vested interests and it is seething with internal differences’. Asked for a message for the weekly readers, Naryan said they should vote without fear, and remember that ‘ if you vote for the Opposition you will vote fore freedom. If you vote for the Congress you will vote for Dictatorship.’
Page 528: A year later Vajpayee visited China, the highest ranking Indian to do so since the boarder war of 1962. On this occasion, however, the trip was marred by the Chinese attack on Vietnam, launched in arrogant disregard of India’s long friendship with the country be invaded.
Page 537: Mrs. Gandhi was kept overnight by the police, but when they produced her before the magistrate the next morning, he threw out the charge sheet as flimsy and insubstantial. The bungled arrest rebounded badly for the Janta government and helped redeem the reputation of their hated opponent. She began making combative speeches…the New York Times in the last week of October said ‘the deposed prime minister has been speaking more and more boldly lately, trying to assume once more the posture of a national leader.
Page 541: Looking back on the three years of the Janta regime, one analyst remembered it as a chronicle of confused and complex party squabbles, intra-party rivalries, shifting alliances, defections, chargers and countercharges of incompetence and the corruption and humiliation of persons who had come to power after the defeat of Mrs. Gandhi’.
Page 556: In the last week of July 1980 the prime minister warned the AASU leaders that their actions could lead to retribution. ‘Suppose other states refused to supply Assam with steel?’ She asked. Indian federalism was based on interdependence. For ‘it was only in the shadow of a bigger unity that each unit can survive; otherwise outside pressures will be too great to bear.’
Page 558: In October 19972 the Working Committee of the Akali Dal passed the Anandpur Sahib Resolution This aked the government of India to hand over Chandigarh to Punjab ( it then shared the city with Haryana); to also had over Punjabi-speaking areas then with other states; and to increase the population of the Sikhs in the army. Asking for a recasting of the Indian Constitution on ‘real federal principles’, it said that ‘in this new Punjab and in other States the Center’s interference would be restricted to defense, foreign relations, currency, and general administration’ all other departments would be the jurisdiction of Punjab (and other States) which would be fully entitled to frame [their] own laws on these subjects’.
Page 600: For politicians of Nehru’s day had worked to contain social cleavages rather than deepen or further them from their own interests. But in other ways the nostalgia was perhaps misplaced. The churning-violent and costly though it undoubtedly was – could be more sympathetically read as a growing decentralization of te Indian polity, away from the hegemony of a single region (the north, a single Party (the Congress), a single family (the Gandhis).
Page 631: In February 2005 I visited Punjab for te first time in three decades. At the time, the prime minister of India was a Sikh; so was the chief of army staff and deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. That Sikhs commanded some of the most important jobs in the nation was widely hailed as a sign of Punjab’s successful reconciliation with India.
Page 649: In the 1990’s the BJP came to define the political agenda in a way the Congress once did in the 1950s and 1960s. ….the political discourse in general came to be obsessed with questions of religious identity rather than matters of economic development or social reform.
Page 650: The literacy rate for Muslims was well below the national average, and te gap between them and other communities was growing. Few Muslim girls were sent to school, while boys were often placed in madrasas (religions schools) whose archaic curricula did not equip them for jobs in the modern economy. Meanwhile the taunts of the Sangh Parivar had inculcated a defensive, almost siege mentality among Muslim intelligentsia. The young men, especially, sought succor in religion, seeing in it a renewed commitment to Islam as an alternative to poverty and persecution in the world outside. Now was the turn to faith always the quietest. A student Islamic Movement of India had arisen, whose leaders argued that threats from rival religion could be met only through force of arms.
Page 652 A larger ambition was to catalyze a civil war in India. As the chief leader of the Lashhkar, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, boasted, that they were aiming to set up a mujahdeen network across India, which when it was up and running, would spell the start of disintegration of India. ‘Revenge is our religious duty’, said Saeed to an American journalist. ‘We beat te Russian superpower in Afghanistan; we can beat the Indian forces too. We fight with the help of Allah, and once we start jihad. No force can withstand us.’ Speaking to a Pakistani reporter, the Lashkar chide claimed that ‘our struggle will continue even if Kashmir is liberated. We still have to take revenge [against India] for [the loss of] East Pakistan.
Page 719: On riches; One Delhi columnist was so certain that India was becoming the worlds titan that he worried that it would repeat the errors of those it had replaced. Where the West in its heyday had callously exploited its colonies, he urged Indian business to establish a loving and friendly relationship with other countries.
Page 745: Forty years later the Atlantic Monthly carried another report on the state of Pakistan. Between the times the country had passed from dictatorship to democracy and then back again to rule by men in uniform. It had also been divided, with its eastern wing seceding to form the sovereign state of Bangladesh. And it had witnessed three wars, each one initiated by the generals whom the peasants had hoped would bring them peace.
Page 746: India’s record in nurturing democracy from within gathered renewed appreciation. When, in April 2004, India held its fourteenth general election the contrast with Pakistan was being highlighted by Pakistanis themselves” ‘India goes to the polls and the world notices’, wrote Karachi columnist Ayaz Amur. “Pakistan plunges into another exercise in authoritarian management – and the world notices, but through jaundice eyes.
Page 751 By contrast with these (and other examples) the Indian nation does not privilege a single language or religious faith. Although the majority of its citizens are Hindus, India is not a Hindu nation. Its constitution does not discriminate between people on the basis of faith nor, more crucially did the nationalist movement that lay behind it do so. From its inception the Indian Congress was, as Mukul Kesavan observes, a sort of political Noah’s Ark which sought to keep every species of Indian on board. Gandhis political program was built upon harmony and co-operation between India’s two major religious communities, Hindu and Muslims. Although in the end, his work and example were unsuccessful in stopping the division of India, the failure made his successors more determined to construct independent India as a secular republic. For Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues, if India was anything at all it was not a ‘Hindu Pakistan.
Page 764: The economic integration of India is a consequence of its political integration They act in a mutually reinforcing loop. The greater the movement of goods and capital and people across India, the greater sense that this is, one country.
By Ramachandra Guha
While sitting at a bar over a couple of beers, I was telling my son what I learned from this book. In this book I learned about India’s founder’s insistence on democracy. I learned about their insistence on governing with a value for secularism. I learned that formulating a national identity was required to bring unity to a 28 States. This was packed in to 700 plus pages of factual detail blended with a coloring of the personal views of many active participants focusing largely around Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. While I was sharing my views, a guy standing next to me fist made a claim that Indians hate Mahatma Gandhi because he slowed down the Indian movement for independence. He then made the assertion that India’s Independence was not won but only handed to them and therefore not as legitimate as what occurred in the American independence. And finally he asserted that nationalism is bad for any people. This came from a History major. So the first words in my mind were ugly American arrogance, hubris, and ignorance. My recommendation to him was for him to read this book. Apparently after acquiring a Bachelors in History he saw no need. To all the rest of my readers, this can be a case made for the ugly American. However in his defense and in this context, the ugliest American leading the way is our own Richard Nixon who was very indignant towards India and Indira Gandhi personally. I can only guess that college’s place a biased view rout from history’s practice to not call it history until 20 years has elapsed and therefore history majors, without studying current affairs are caught flat footed and behind the times. I too was guilty of ignorance until I read this book. It is only lately that the United States has opened up to India. It is only lately since 1990 that India has found sound international footing as an economic power. In response, GW Bush was the first American President to visit India. It’s my hope and recommendation that all Americans follow suit and this book is a great bridge to understanding today’s India.
This book lays it out there. India’s accomplishments had its challenges, its bright side and its dark side. It is far from perfect, yet because of its secular based democracy and its national unity of over one billion people, there is nothing but potential for national good. On this record, India has never waged a preemptive war on any other country. In fact at the core of India’s governance is to manage themselves on Indian terms alone. Of its domestic problems there is a disparity in people caused by a caste system, religion, language and the cultures that are derived from the previous three. Where Mahatma Gandhi had cast the mold for India to find its independence in a secular democracy it was the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, of like mind with Gandhi, who poured raw material into mold. Nehru ruled over India with a socialistic hand in a parliamentary government through its first 15 years. This period was followed by an equal amount of time under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi daughter Indira Gandhi where in turn her son ruled over India. It is clearly seen through the succession of the Gandhi line that Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy was at the heart of every Indian as the father of their country.
Guha makes it clear that India found its own way un-assisted by outside influence. Unlike Pakistan, India did not seek out foreign assistance from superpower governments. Guha indirectly makes a point that by turning up its nose to the United States, it left India strong and of independent mind. India did find a strong relationship with the USSR but only commercially, albeit the USSR made every attempt to expand her communism. The USSR was marginally successful, where three of India’s States are still lead through pertinent communist parties. The unique reality of this is these three States live in relative harmony with India’s other twenty-four States. During this period India’s relationship with the Unites States was indifferent from India’s perspective and outright rude from the American perspective. Richard Nixon was extremely rude to Indira Gandhi in her visit to the White House, and his disparaging remarks towards her and India are what reverberated down to the American masses. Hence to this day there are generations of American people with the wrong impression of today’s India. This ugly American is only a product of his village, and he can’t alone be charged as guilty.
With Regard to Nehru’s policy, fate and philosophy forced a socialistic agenda. The lower Castes were first and foremost in need of a voice. It was that voice backed by the guiding hand of Nehru and a few other key aids that have given the lower Caste population a venue to climb the ladder. While that social prejudice still exists in many circles, the lower Cast is integrating in to a contributing force in India. They are now contributing at higher level jobs and thus becoming consumers that will churn the economy upwards. It is only a matter of time and this powerful group in terms of shear numbers alone will position India on favorable footing.
Nehur’s ambivalence to strong central power was positioned as not so greedy to take anything away from the States. Imagine our forefathers giving voice to our American Indians allowing them power in certain States, rather than on reservations. Imagine the center allowing autonomous control of the many intricate cultural issues. Imagine at the same time promoting a sense of nationalism for which all Indians could identify. Many of Nehru’s social projects were to the benefit of interstate commerce and therefore the improved standard of living in a united India. India also faced a war with China and three wars with Pakistan. All were provoked by their neighbors. Nagaland and Kashmir represent the battle ground for the most part. While each State could have argued for their independence, they each rose to a national ascendance to India, albeit when the boundaries were drawn in 1948, they already were Indian from a legal point of view. Nehru faced similar challenges in the central “Princely States”, where he created unity through socializing natural resources. Nehru’s toughest nut to crack was and still is for his successors is the Hindu/Muslim tension. Oddly enough While Muslims are in the minority population-wise, they all prefer to stay and vote in India. At present they have a strong footing in power at State and Central level, they are also well recognize in the cinema and sports circles.
On Kashmir, it is India’s to hold and Pakistanis to attack. The author explains in numerous different chapters where the fog lay. It comes out in the book that in the beginning a dominant figure was Sheikh Abdullah who had the hearts of the Kashmiri’s While possibly true in his heart to Kashmir’s he believed in accession to India, he apparently abused his position by absorbing his destined power to unite the people around him as opposed to India. It was an ambition for power. In this fog he created Pakistan took license to launch numerous incursions over the boarder, many of which escalated to the level of declared war. However he makes no assertion that the boundaries drawn at the formation of India had this State inside of India.
Within Kashmir the majority of the people are Muslim. However in their minds it was never a choice to be either Pakistani or Indian, but rather to be autonomous of the Indian central government. There has been at times an option to be its own sovereign country but the people elected to stay united with India and not be the trampling crossroads of international wars. In 2002 75% of Kashmi’s people voted which clearly indicates the voice of the people, where election results produced Sikh Prime Minister and Muslim president. But still today, there is always the ever presence of insurgent activity spilling over the boarder to capture once again a land that has always belonged to India. In India, anywhere, the Hindu violence toward the Muslim in was/is largely unorganized emotional reaction of the majority upon the minority at community level. The Muslim violence was/is a calculated by the neighboring State of Pakistan an organized Holy War not just for Kashmir, but for some for the complete destruction of India.
At the end of the chapter on ‘Democracy in Disarray’ Guha draws a contrast between the two leaders of government through the better part of India’s first thirty years. Both were of social mind. But that is where their similarities ended. Where Nehru built a party and a country through unity and democracy, his daughter moved so far left that she could trust no one. Where Nehru was uniting the various Indian States via cooperative water and land management projects for example, Indira was isolating herself from her party of which caused the parties to plot against each other to the detriment of the people. While Indira was decisive, in war it helped her win both the war and her countrymen’s favor. It was that same decisiveness without listening to her political advisers that led to discord in her party and divisiveness in the country. The hard move further left destroyed the political integrity of Indian due process and gave birth to a bedrock of corruption that thrives to this day. Indira did not strangle her country to death as she did hand her imposed dictatorship back to the people after two years of emergency rule. While Indians themselves distain the corruption in politics, where politics has become a family business, it is the legacy of Indira Gandhi. Where India’s democracy will thrive through any storm is the legacy of Nehru.
The reason why democracy will thrive is India’s move to the right. In the wake of emergency rule Indria Gandhi was assassinated by a rival minority Sikh party member. It was her first son Rajiv who assumed power through election that began a significant move to the right, releasing more and more government controls allowing capitalism to flourish. This in conjunction with the breakup of the USSR caused India’s shift in business to America. With a capitalistic mindset and a capitalistic set of trading partners India now has the right chemistry to become a prime mover on the world’s stage.
When comparing India with the United State; they are both democratic republics. There is a divergence in balance however in the words republic and democracy. Because of India’s structure of Parliament and through policy in Delhi, their States have much more autonomy in governing themselves. Also the way they elect representation to send to Delhi draws a much more variegated meeting of national interests. In India the State's interest comes first. In our United States the federal interests come first. Hence in India socialism became an ideal that best knitted the interests and welfare of all people and therefore melded a disparate people under one nation. I think the key to success, after reading this book, are Guha’s choice words variegated interests meeting of national interests. I believe that there will be a time here in America where we look to India to reunite our people. History has many examples where a country’s leader has taken their people to war, where there is an alleged agenda to bring unity of the people around said leader. In Germany for example we saw that with Bismarck and then again in Hitler. It is my sincere hope that American unity is not found in war but in India’s example of allowing our great country find its republic roots and hand power back to the States and thrive off of a variegated national interest vested in State politics where it may seem we succession is eminent but in that context is indeed our reason to unite.
My favorite quote, of this book is as follows: To quote a European observer of India’s first election it was;’ perhaps the most motley a assemblage in any quarter of this orb’; to quote another, it was ‘a true centre of the diverse varieties of types of mankind far surpassing the mix of nationalities of Cairo and Constantinople’. Through a national identity under the flag of India, what was written after their first election holds true to this day. So when an ugly American claims diversity in America to be one of its strengths, he must appreciate that in India there is that same virtue times three. If indeed there is power in numbers, as you gloat in apparent world hegemony, beware of the real Asian tiger. And know he is your friend so treat him as such.
Notes
As I copied excerpts of the book I took note of the authors use of quotations, interjecting the exact words of the people chronicling the events at that time. The evidence in the back of the book holds almost 100 pages of notes, which in my mind is a disciplined method to avoid being accused of re-writing history.
Page 58: In truth, both politicians and bureaucrats had their indispensable allies the most faceless of all humans: the people
Page 65 On August 14 several shops and offices in Poonch had flown Pakistani flags, indicating their allegiance lay to that country, and not to the unaffiliated state of Kashmir. In the following weeks clashes between Dogra troops and local protesters were reported. By the beginning of September dozens of Poonch men had equipped themselves with rifles from ‘informal sources in Pakistan’. The also has established a base in the Pakistani town of Murree, here were collected arms and ammunition to be smuggled across the boarder in Kashmir.
Page 68: On the morning of the 26th Menon flew back to Delhi, accompanies by the prime minister of Kashmir. Another meeting of the Defence Committee was convened. In attendance apart from Mountbatten, Nehru and Patel, was Sheikh Abdullah, who happened to be in Delhi that day. Both he and Mahjan urged that India immediately send troops to push back the invaders. Mountbatten suggested, however, that it would be best to secure Hari Singh’s accession to India before committing forces to his defense.
Page 77: Whether or not Abdullah was India’s man, he certainly was not Pakistan’s. In April 1948 he described that country as an unscrupulous and savage enemy’. He dismissed Pakistan as a theocratic state and the Muslim League as pro-prince rather than pro people.
Page 100: Like the integration of the princely states, the rehabilitation of refugees was a political problem unprecedented in nature and scope. The migrants into India from Pakistan, wrote one of their number, were ‘like the fallen autumn leaves in the wind or bits of stray newspaper flying hither and thither in the blown dust’. For those who have come away safe in limb and mind are without any bearings and without any roots.
Page 105:
Thus the All-India Varnashrama Swarajya (based in Calcutta asked that the constitution ‘be based on the principles laid down in ancient Hindu works’ The prohibition of cow-slaughter and the closing down of abattoirs was particularly recommended The low-caste groups demanded an end to their ill treatment by upper-caste people and reservation of separate seats on the basis of their population in legislature, government bodies, etc. Linguistic minorities asked for freedom of speech in their mother tongue and the redistribution f provinces on linguistic basis. Religious minorities asked for special safeguards.
Page 109: The Hindi scholar Raghu Vira claimed that ancient India was the originator of the Republican system of government and spread this system to other parts of the world.
Page 111: For the horrific communal violence of 1946 and 1947 bore witness to the need for a stron centre. In the words of Kazi Syed Kazimuddin, ‘everybody is not Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’ ( in the respect of his commitment to inter-religious harmony)
Page 120: Ambedker ended his speech with three warnings about the future. The first concerned the place of popular protest in a democracy. There was no place for blody revolution, of course, but in his view there was no room for Gandhian methods either. We must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha [popular protest] Under an autocratic regime, there might be some justification for them, but not now, when constitutional methods of redress are available.
Page 130: ‘We have to treat our minorities in exactly the same way as we treat the Majority’, insisted Nehru. ‘indeed, fair treatment is not enough; we have to make them feel that they are so treated.’ Now,’ in view of the prevailing confusion and the threat of false doctrine, it has become essential that the Congress should declare its policy in this matter in the clearest and most unambiguous terms.’
Page 141: The sentiment was Gandhi-like, and indeed Nehru’s next major speech was delivered to Delhi on the afternoon of 2 October, the Mahatma’s birthday. To a mammoth crowd he spoke in Hindustani about government’s determination to abolish both untouchability and landlordism. Once more he identified communalists as the chief enemies, who ‘will be shown no quarter’, and ‘overpowered with all our strength.’
Page 147: On the eve of the polls Sukmar Sen suggested they constitutes ‘the biggest experiment in democracy in human history.’ A veteran Madras editor was less neutral: he complained that a ‘very large majority [will] exercise votes for the first time; not many know what a vote is, why they should vote, and whom they should vote for; no wonder the whole adventure is rated the biggest gamble in history.’
Just as skeptical as the All Souls man was the Organizer, a weekly published by revanchist Hindu group, the RSS. This hoped that Hawaharlal Nehru ‘would live to confess the failure of universal adult franchise in India.’ It claimed that Mahatma Gandhi had ‘warned against this precipitate dose of democracy’, and that Rajendra Prasad, was ‘skeptical about this leap in the dark.’ Yet Nehru, ‘who has all along lived by slogans and stunts, would not listen.’
Page 149: A visiting Turkish journalist focused on the content of the election rather than its form. He admired Nehru’s decision not to follow other Asian countries in taking ‘ the line of least resistance’ by developing a dictatorship with centralization of power and intolerance of dissent and criticism’. The prime minister had ‘wisely kept away from such temptation’.
Page 191: To quote a European observer it was;’ perhaps the most motley a assemblage in any quarter of this orb’; to quote another, it was ‘a true centre of the diverse varieties of types of mankind far surpassing the mix of nationalities of Cairo and Constantinople’.
Page 198: But once Nehru conceded Andhra, and set the States Reorganization Commission, it was inevitable that the country as a whole would be reorganized on the basis of language.
Page 205: From Japan and Russia the NPC took lesson that countries that industrialized late had to depend crucially on state intervention. …In the early stages of industrialization, they argued, it was necessary that the ‘State should exercise in the interests of the community a considerable measure of intervention and control.’ Indeed, ‘and enlargement of the positive as well as preventative functions of the State is essential to any large-scale economic planning.’
Page 211: Planning was thus a ‘might co-operative effort of all the people of India. Nehru hoped that the new projects would be solvent to dissolve the schisms of caste and religion, community and region.
Page 224: This consensus was shared by large sections of the ruling class as well. In their Bombay Plan the leading industrialist had asked for an “enlargement of the positive functions of the State’. The approvingly quoted Cambridge economist A.C. Pigou’s view that freedom and planning were entirely compatible. Indeed, these big businessmen went so far as to state that ‘the distinction between capitalism and socialism has lost much of its significance from a practical standpoint.
Page 228: As it happened, during the last years of their rule the British had belatedly initiated framing of uniform code for Hindus. This sought to reconcile the prescriptions of the two principal schools of law – the Mitakshara and the Dayabhaga – and their numerous local variations. A committee had been set up in 1941 chaired by Sir B.N. Rau, who was also to play a crucial role in drafting the Indian Constitution. The committee toured India, soliciting a wide spectrum of Hindu opinion on the changes they proposed. Their progress was interrupted by the war, but by 1946 that had prepared a draft of a personal law code to be applied to all Hindus.
Page 241: Others viewed this caution more cynically. As Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee pointed out in the provisional Parliament, ‘it is nobody’s case that monogamy is good for Hindus alone or Buddhists alone or for Sikhs alone?’ Why not have a separate bill prescribing monogamy for all citizens? Having asked the question, Dr. Mookerjee supplied this answer: ‘I am not going to tread on this question because I know the weakness of the promoters of this bill. They dare not touch the Muslim minority. There will be so much opposition coming from throughout India that government will not dare to proceed with it. But of course you can proceed with the Hindu community in any way you like and whatever the consequences may be.’
Page 257: Ten days after he assumed power he visited Jammu, where he spoke to a large crowd, assuring them that ‘ties between Kashmir and India are irrevocable. No power on earth can separate the two.’ Next speaking in Srinagar Sheikh Abdullah played directly in to the hands of foreign invaders but entertaining the idea of an independent Kashmir.’ That said was a dangerous game, pregnant with disastrous consequence for Kashmir, India and Pakistan. Since Kashmir lacked resources to defend itself, independence was a ‘crack-brained idea’, calculated only to make the state a center of superpower intrigue, it was an idea that can devastate the people.
Page 289: These (socialistic moves) were important measures, helping hundreds of thousands of poor peasants, but still somewhat short of Red catechism prescribed. The contradiction was resolved by recourse to the ‘stages’ theory of classic Marxism. It was argued that rural India was still ‘semi-feudal’. All no-feudal classes were to be rallied around the proposed reforms which, when in place, would unleash agrarian capitalism, the next necessary stop in the high road to socialism.
Page 298: In May 1959, and touching eighty Rajaji launched a new political party, the Swatantra Party. This party focused its criticism on the ‘personality cult’ around the prime minister, and on economic policies of the ruling Congress. Its founding statement asked for a ‘proper decentralized distribution of industry through the nurturing of ‘competitive enterprise’ and, in agriculture, for encouragement of ‘self-employed peasant proprietor who stands for initiative and freedom’. It rejected the ‘techniques pf so called socialism and the ‘bringing into being of Statism’
Page 319: This ( the Chinese reason to invade Kashmir) was clearly because of their need to have speedy access to Tibet.
Page 325: The following year, in 1961, the writer Aldous Huxley visited India after a gap of thirty-five years. He was overwhelmed by what he found, namely, ‘the prospect of overpopulation, underemployment, growing unrest’.
Page 332: In the event it was the enemy who acted first. A phony war, which had lasted all of three years, was made very real on the night of 19/20 October, when Chinese simultaneously launched an invasion in both the eastern and western sectors. The blitzkrieg across the Himalaya had come as ‘Pragmatist’ had predicted it would.
Page 334: Nehru’s speech might be read as a belated acknowledgment of the correctness of Vallaabhbhai Patel’s warning of 1950: that communism in China was an extreme expression of nationalism, rather than its nullification.
Page 352: On April 28, the day before Abdullah was due to arrive in Delhi, the Jana Singh held a large procession in the capital. The marchers shouted anti-Abduallah and anti-Nehru slogans and demanded that government of India abrogate Article 370 and declare Kashmir to be an ‘integral and indivisible part of India’ (which it already was as the article was intended to bring a peaceful resolution to unrest cause by Abdullaha’s antics.)
Page 369: The prime minister acknowledged that ‘Pakistan is pursuing a policy of utter callousness in this matter’. However, he insisted the ‘we cannot copy the methods or ideals of Pakistan.” The have declared themselves openly to be an Islamic State believing in the two-nation theory We reject the theory and call ourselves a secular State giving full protection to all religions.
Page 371: Among Tyanji’s other suggestions were that Muslims ask for technical and commercial education, rather then merely study the humanities and join the ranks of the educated employed. Even as regards ti humanistic learning, he deplored attempts to keep ‘our Islamic culture…in a state of fossilized purity.’
Page 383: On Untouchables: Recalling the reactionary forces which came into play after partition, the editor remarked that ‘had Nehru shown the slightest weakness, these forces would have turned the country into a Hindu state in which minorities…could have not lived with any measure of safety or security’. It was also to Nehru;s credit that he insisted that Untouchables be granted full rights, such that ‘in public life and in all government action, the equality of man would be scrupulously maintained in the secular state of India.’
Page 401:…This is the difference between India and Pakistan. Where as Pakistan proclaims herself to be an Islamic State and uses religion as a political factor, we Indians have freedom to follow whatever religion we may choose [and] worship in any way we please. So far as politics are concerned, each of us are as much Indian as the other.
Page 403: What Shastri gave India Life said, ‘was mainly a mood- a new steeliness and sense of national unity.’ The Chinese war had brought the country to a state of near collapse, but this time, when war came, ‘everything worked – the trains ran, the army held fast, there was no communal rioting. The old moral pretentiousness, the disillusion and drift, the fear and dismay were gone.’
Page 425: (on Calcutta’s move to the left)These stoppages created a ripple in the British press, in part because many of the great Calcutta firms were British owned, in part because this had once been the capital of the Raj. ‘West Bengal expects more lawlessness’ ran one headline; ‘Riot stops opening of West Bengal Assembly’ ran another. The response of many factory owners, Indian as well as European, was to shut down their units. Other shifted their business elsewhere, in a process of capital flight that served to displace Calcutta as the leading center of Indian industry.
Page 433: (on parallels between the Raj and Nehru) Here the parallels end. Seeking to unite a divided India, Nehru articulated am ideology that rested on four main pillars. First, there was democracy, the freedom to choose ones friend and speak one’s mind ( and in the language of ones choice) – above all the freedom to choose ones leaders through regular elections based on universal adult franchise. Second, there was secularism, the neutrality of te state in matters of religion and its commitment to maintaining a social peace. Third, there was socialism, the attempt to augment productivity while ensuring a more egalitarian distribution of income (and social opportunity). Fourth there was non-alignment, the placement of India beyond and above the rivalries of the Great Powers. Among the less compelling, but not necessarily less significant, elements of this worldview were the conscious cultivation of a multiparty system…
Page 436: Speeches made by Mrs. Gandhi after her re-election show her identifying explicitly with the poor and vulnerable. Speaking to Lok Sabha in February 1968, she stressed the problems of landless labor, expressed her concern for all the minorities of India’ and defended the public sector from criticisms that it was not making profit ( her answer that it did not need to, since it was building a base for economic development).
Page 443: They could see what bound the varied religions, races and regions: namely a shared constitution and a tradition of regular elections. Nor did they think the challenges of the states a threat to national unity.
Page 457: On her November visit Mrs. Gandhi had two meetings with President Nixon. Kissinger had the impression that this was ‘a classic dialogue of the deaf’. Nixon said that the US would not be party to the overthrow Yahya Khan, and warned India that consequences of military action were incalculably dangerous’. Mrs. Gandhi answered that it was the Pakistanis who spoke of waging a ‘holy war’. She also pointed out that while West Pakistanis had ‘dealt with Bengali people in a treacherous and deceitful way and…always relegated them to an inferior role’, India, ‘on the other hand, has always reflected a degree of forbearance toward its own separatists elements.
Page 460: Said Nixon: “The Indians are such poor pilots they can’t even get off the ground,’ he had claimed in October. His hope now was that ‘the liberals are going to look like jerks because the Indian occupation of East Pakistan is going to make the Pakistani on look like child’s play.’
Page 462: The left-wing jurist V. R. Krishna Iyer saw in the recent movements a progressive maturation of Indian leadership; ‘What in Gandhian days was a vague creed was spelt out in Nehru’s time as an activist social philosophy, and became, under Mrs. Gandhi’s leadership a concrete and dynamic program of governmental action.
Page 467: On 15 August 1972 India celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of Independence. A special midnight sitting was held in the Lok Sabha where the prime minister recalled the struggle for freedom from the 1857 rebellion to the present, marking the major landmarks along the way. The Indian quest, said Mrs. Gandhi, ‘has been friendship with all, submission to none.’ The next morning she addressed the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort. ‘India is stronger today that it was twenty-five years ago’, said the prime minister. ‘ Our democracy has found roots, our thinking is clear, our goals are determined, our paths are planned to achieve goals and our unity is more solid today than ever before.’ ‘Nations march ahead’, insisted Mrs. Gandhi, ‘not by looking at others but with self-confidence, determination and unity.’
Page 486: The Party President, L. K. Advani, claimed that Abdullah still ‘wanted to use the instrument of power to pursue his ambition of an independent Kashmir.’ Others saw the matter very differently. After the Sheikh was sworn in as chief minister on 25 February, the Indian Express called it an ‘epochal event in the history of free India’. Abdullah’s return to his old post, twenty-three years after he had been forced to leave it, was a tribute to the resilience and maturity of Indian democracy, for it is only in a true democratic set-up that even the most serious differences can be harmonized and reconciliations effected within the framework of common loyalty to country.
Page 495: These were the signs of a creeping dictatorship. Like military men who seize power via a coup. Mrs. Gandhi claimed to have acted to save the country from itself. And like them, she went on to say that, while she had denied her people freedom, she would give them bread in exchange.
Page 500: Mrs. Gandhi, and Congress, were now supreme al over the land. When the art historians Mildred and W.G. Archer went to meet her in March 1976, the prime minister expressed satisfaction with her progress of the emergency. The new regime, she told them, ‘had made the State Ministers shake in their shoes’. This was ‘long over due and was excellent’, for ‘too much devolution [was] fatal to India’. ‘I have to keep India together’, insisted Mrs. Gandhi.
Page 508: The India and/vs democracy was discussed most vigorously in the British press. The political class in the United Kingdom was divided; while some MPs signed the Free JPappeal, Mrs Gandhi’s regime was endorsed by, among others, Labor’s Michael Foot…they concluded that the emergency was, on balance, beneficial to its people. Wrote a conservative; that the emergency was far less oppressive than the Times reported it to be,
Page 523: The prime minister told the interviewer that the Janta men ‘are only united against me, but not on any positive program’. The name could not hide the same old aim, which is to get rid of Indira Gandhi. In his interview JP claimed that ‘the Janta Party is no greater hotchpotch than the Congress’ For the ruling party had within it all types of vested interests and it is seething with internal differences’. Asked for a message for the weekly readers, Naryan said they should vote without fear, and remember that ‘ if you vote for the Opposition you will vote fore freedom. If you vote for the Congress you will vote for Dictatorship.’
Page 528: A year later Vajpayee visited China, the highest ranking Indian to do so since the boarder war of 1962. On this occasion, however, the trip was marred by the Chinese attack on Vietnam, launched in arrogant disregard of India’s long friendship with the country be invaded.
Page 537: Mrs. Gandhi was kept overnight by the police, but when they produced her before the magistrate the next morning, he threw out the charge sheet as flimsy and insubstantial. The bungled arrest rebounded badly for the Janta government and helped redeem the reputation of their hated opponent. She began making combative speeches…the New York Times in the last week of October said ‘the deposed prime minister has been speaking more and more boldly lately, trying to assume once more the posture of a national leader.
Page 541: Looking back on the three years of the Janta regime, one analyst remembered it as a chronicle of confused and complex party squabbles, intra-party rivalries, shifting alliances, defections, chargers and countercharges of incompetence and the corruption and humiliation of persons who had come to power after the defeat of Mrs. Gandhi’.
Page 556: In the last week of July 1980 the prime minister warned the AASU leaders that their actions could lead to retribution. ‘Suppose other states refused to supply Assam with steel?’ She asked. Indian federalism was based on interdependence. For ‘it was only in the shadow of a bigger unity that each unit can survive; otherwise outside pressures will be too great to bear.’
Page 558: In October 19972 the Working Committee of the Akali Dal passed the Anandpur Sahib Resolution This aked the government of India to hand over Chandigarh to Punjab ( it then shared the city with Haryana); to also had over Punjabi-speaking areas then with other states; and to increase the population of the Sikhs in the army. Asking for a recasting of the Indian Constitution on ‘real federal principles’, it said that ‘in this new Punjab and in other States the Center’s interference would be restricted to defense, foreign relations, currency, and general administration’ all other departments would be the jurisdiction of Punjab (and other States) which would be fully entitled to frame [their] own laws on these subjects’.
Page 600: For politicians of Nehru’s day had worked to contain social cleavages rather than deepen or further them from their own interests. But in other ways the nostalgia was perhaps misplaced. The churning-violent and costly though it undoubtedly was – could be more sympathetically read as a growing decentralization of te Indian polity, away from the hegemony of a single region (the north, a single Party (the Congress), a single family (the Gandhis).
Page 631: In February 2005 I visited Punjab for te first time in three decades. At the time, the prime minister of India was a Sikh; so was the chief of army staff and deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. That Sikhs commanded some of the most important jobs in the nation was widely hailed as a sign of Punjab’s successful reconciliation with India.
Page 649: In the 1990’s the BJP came to define the political agenda in a way the Congress once did in the 1950s and 1960s. ….the political discourse in general came to be obsessed with questions of religious identity rather than matters of economic development or social reform.
Page 650: The literacy rate for Muslims was well below the national average, and te gap between them and other communities was growing. Few Muslim girls were sent to school, while boys were often placed in madrasas (religions schools) whose archaic curricula did not equip them for jobs in the modern economy. Meanwhile the taunts of the Sangh Parivar had inculcated a defensive, almost siege mentality among Muslim intelligentsia. The young men, especially, sought succor in religion, seeing in it a renewed commitment to Islam as an alternative to poverty and persecution in the world outside. Now was the turn to faith always the quietest. A student Islamic Movement of India had arisen, whose leaders argued that threats from rival religion could be met only through force of arms.
Page 652 A larger ambition was to catalyze a civil war in India. As the chief leader of the Lashhkar, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, boasted, that they were aiming to set up a mujahdeen network across India, which when it was up and running, would spell the start of disintegration of India. ‘Revenge is our religious duty’, said Saeed to an American journalist. ‘We beat te Russian superpower in Afghanistan; we can beat the Indian forces too. We fight with the help of Allah, and once we start jihad. No force can withstand us.’ Speaking to a Pakistani reporter, the Lashkar chide claimed that ‘our struggle will continue even if Kashmir is liberated. We still have to take revenge [against India] for [the loss of] East Pakistan.
Page 719: On riches; One Delhi columnist was so certain that India was becoming the worlds titan that he worried that it would repeat the errors of those it had replaced. Where the West in its heyday had callously exploited its colonies, he urged Indian business to establish a loving and friendly relationship with other countries.
Page 745: Forty years later the Atlantic Monthly carried another report on the state of Pakistan. Between the times the country had passed from dictatorship to democracy and then back again to rule by men in uniform. It had also been divided, with its eastern wing seceding to form the sovereign state of Bangladesh. And it had witnessed three wars, each one initiated by the generals whom the peasants had hoped would bring them peace.
Page 746: India’s record in nurturing democracy from within gathered renewed appreciation. When, in April 2004, India held its fourteenth general election the contrast with Pakistan was being highlighted by Pakistanis themselves” ‘India goes to the polls and the world notices’, wrote Karachi columnist Ayaz Amur. “Pakistan plunges into another exercise in authoritarian management – and the world notices, but through jaundice eyes.
Page 751 By contrast with these (and other examples) the Indian nation does not privilege a single language or religious faith. Although the majority of its citizens are Hindus, India is not a Hindu nation. Its constitution does not discriminate between people on the basis of faith nor, more crucially did the nationalist movement that lay behind it do so. From its inception the Indian Congress was, as Mukul Kesavan observes, a sort of political Noah’s Ark which sought to keep every species of Indian on board. Gandhis political program was built upon harmony and co-operation between India’s two major religious communities, Hindu and Muslims. Although in the end, his work and example were unsuccessful in stopping the division of India, the failure made his successors more determined to construct independent India as a secular republic. For Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues, if India was anything at all it was not a ‘Hindu Pakistan.
Page 764: The economic integration of India is a consequence of its political integration They act in a mutually reinforcing loop. The greater the movement of goods and capital and people across India, the greater sense that this is, one country.
The Argumentative Indian
The Argumentative Indian
by Amartya Sen
Is mankind free to speak his mind? Does differing opinion add value to civilized society? The argument begins millennia ago with creation. It finds only argument on these questions with no real value placed on either side. Oddly enough at the root of much of the debate is religion where the same balance goes with the need or not, to subscribe to any religious orthodoxy; hence heterodoxy best describes the Argumentative Indian. By page four I found argument with Sen. Having read the Bhagavad-Gita I came away with a different scenario on allegorical portrayal of a principle. That of non attachment to the physical world is central to the Gita, I was impressed that it was Arjuna making the argument for fate. It was Krishna doubting the reason for war. It was Arjuna rationalizing on the separation of body and soul, making material outcomes not important. Oddly enough My argument is only technical in merit an so, why should I argue. None the less, surely I the reader must make way to the well studied author; a modest degree of skepticism shadowed my reading of this book. When you think of it do not skepticism and argument find them selves bookends to leaves of theories put to the test of debate.
Basically the book is a collection of essays that Sen has written over the course of his career as an author, amongst many other accomplishments, including a Nobel Prize. His main thrust is that giving man the power to freely debate his views is the reason for hope in a future for man kind. He makes clear that fertile ground for debate is democracy. The reader becomes keenly aware that India is now the world’s largest democracy. To make sure the reader appreciates this Sen demonstrates that democracy is intimately connected with public discussion and interactive reasoning where Indian history is rich with evidence. Lesson learned; traditions of public discussion exist across the world, not just in the West. And to the extent that such a tradition can be drawn on, democracy is easier to institute and also to preserve. As I read through this book I was always looking for a that evidence supporting a general theme and characteristic in Sen’s argument. Upon entering my last foot note I landed on it. This last foot note is an example of Sens many posed arguments, where he sites two antonym notions and finds congruency in the application of their outcomes. Just when you have caught on to one side of an argument he would reverse the strategy. It paints a complex picture, where there is always room for two winning sides of an argument and therefore unity through politics.
Hinduvta having roots in Hindu is a recent movement, relatively speaking, in what appears to be an effort to attach a religious identity to India. Accidentally or on purpose, Hindu’s characteristics in doctrine are one that brings unity to people by accepting all walks of life. Hinduvta is actually a heterodoxy faith and the root of Indian Democracy. To qualify Sen’s views one must appreciate that he is Bengali, a culture with strong Muslim influence. Yet he himself is a secularist with acceptance of all and at the same time no real attachment to any religion. Ironically, a prime tenant of Hindu is non attachment. The aforementioned makes Hindi a religion different from the major religions, yet it does practice a belief in one god.
Sen makes a lengthy argument against the Hindutva movement basically because of his secular orientation. He advocates heterodoxy separate from a Hindu policy which seems to me superfluous. Why argue about things that don’t need argument. I wrap with one anecdotal question on this. His argument lay with the fact that there are many religions comprising India today and Hindu is simply the majority. He continuously argues for equal distance the Indian government must maintain, which is different from separation of church and state here in the United States. As a secularist and in conjunction with the coincidence that he is a native Bengali he makes a strong argument that Hindu is not a religion of the same unity as Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Hindi are a people that by their doctrine embrace all religions not just their own. So I am a bit puzzled by Sen's concern with Hindutva. It appears that Hindutva is the solution to found a multi-religious state around Hindi doctrine. Sen speaks to the secular Carvaka system and went further and suggested the need for methodological scrutiny of knowledge that is services - directly or indirectly from perception. I suggest he take that same approach in his argument with the Hinduvta movement. I could say in a with all due respect yet as an American, what is his beef?
Enfolded within Sen’s argument he uses the phrase "homogenize to ‘hegemonize’". He associates that with the violence foisted on the people by some policy of the State of India. While I see numerous intervening steps here in America, I can surely see through the departure from 150 years constitutional interpretation, Roosevelt ushered a slippery run of Federal hegemony over the individual States of our Republic. Obama has done it with Obamacare, his law suit against the State of Arizona and his deployment of funds to support his position against the Governor of Wisconsin. Franklin D. Roosevelt was accused of much the same maneuvering in the 1930s. History will remember Obama the same way. These draw ominous parallel to Hitler's consolidation of power from 1932 to 1936, In America the protests may be of agitated spirit but rarely of violent nature to the degree found in India. I can only suspect that as economics improve, India’s people will be become less desperate and therefore less violent towards one another. In this ominous parallel I find fertile ground for Sen’s concern. The safeguard both governments have is term limits in power.
With regard to India’s culture front through literature Sen first talks on the author, lecturer and educator, Tagore in an essay aimed and literature in India. with it's influence on diversity. He follows with an essay on Satyajit Ray and the film industry's influence on India. The theme of Tagore is mostly introspective. Ray drives home the notion of India's cosmopolitan nature; one that while embracing Asian borne diversity, there is not much that convinces me on the reception of this in the Western ways. While received thru force, I am not convinced Western culture runs very deep in India. In saying this I am also suspect that India does not require Western culture. In fact they may receive it but like two year olds playing next to each other, it is not essential to share their toys to have a relationship. Hence a deep India-Western relationship may be rare for a reason. And then when I read about the abject indifference the wealthy have on their surrounding poor, I suspect perhaps there is some common ground in capitalistic democracy. Ironically right after I made this note, Sen deals with this under the headings of External Sources and Modernity, The Elusive 'Asian Values'. He answers it directly in his concluding paragraph under the section title Ours and Theirs: The essences of his conclusion that so much parallel the ideology of the United States :
The difficulties of communication across cultures are real, as are the judgmental issues raised by the importance of cultural differences. But these recognitions do not lead us to accept the standard distinctions between ‘our culture” and ‘their culture’. Nor do they give us cause to overlook the demands of practical reason and of political and social relevance in contemporary India, in favor of faithfulness so alleged historical contrasts….
The celebration of these differences – the ‘dizzying contrasts’ – is far from what can be found in the labored generalizations about ‘our culture’ and the vigorous pleas, increasingly vocal, to keep ‘our culture’, ‘our modernity’ distinctly unique and immune from the influence of ‘their culture’, ‘their modernity’. In our heterogeneity and in our openness lies our pride, not our disgrace. Satyajit Ray taught us this, and that lesson is profoundly important to India. And for Asia and for the world.
Sen illustrates many cases in Indian literary history in making the argument that public discussion (argument) is a tradition much older in India than the West. At high level we are familiar with the phrase, “never talk religion and politics in family discussion”. Well think of a people that transitioned from Buddhism to Hindu, while mixing in home grown Jainism and Sihk and importing Islam, Christianity, Judaism and a few others all having equal distance from the government. And Sen is careful to distinguish the ideas of “equal distant from religion” from “separation of church and State” Just the analysis of the two phrases suggest India’s diverse religious beginnings where even in conquest, the conquerors adopted or embraced the religions of the conquered. These are described in events centuries before America’s rooted in a Judeo-Christian/Greco-Roman foundation. Sens key word through the book is heterodoxy: the inclusion of religion as opposed to the separation from religion
Sen delves into the popular subjects on India such as Class, India’s international positioning, and calendars. I have captured the high points in the notes section of this review. What I most appreciated were Sens views on the subject of Reason. After three hundred or so pages of reading his rationale, brought forth in an ‘argumentative setting’, Sen comes out with his views on Reason. Sen attempts to excuse those who cling to Cast by saying: “Attacks on ethics based on reason have come recently from several different directions. Apart from the claim that the ‘Enlightenment view of human psychology’ neglects many human responses (as Glover argues), we also hear the claim that to rely primarily on reasoning in the ethics of human behavior involves neglect of culture specific influences on values and conduct. People’s thoughts and identities are fairly comprehensively determined, according to this claim, by the tradition and culture in which they are reared rather than by analytical reasoning.” He adds “Indeed, the importance of instinctive psychology and sympathetic response should be adequately recognized, and Glover is also right in believing that our hope for the future must, to a considerable extent, depend on the sympathy and respect with which we respond to things happening to others. To this I say: How about calling a person out for mindless adherence to tradition. How about simply telling a Brahman that systematically denigrating those of lower class only adds to the weight of the anchor on the Indian economy? To Sen’s credit his agreement is seemingly balanced in the end, so much so that if there is a point to be made, it is obscured by the balance beam of justice leaving lady justice so blind that a way forward becomes something that you must feel for.
This book will certainly add to ones ability the appreciation for eloquent argument. It grapples with many difficult topics. And in the end Sen leaves it open for argument. If you want to survive a cocktail party and be well recognized as being well versed in controversy this book is worth your time. India has yet to master, though may be on the verge of it, an Indian-ness of democracy that could one day master the world. As debate would have it, the jury is still out. However I believe that on Sen’s ring of keys, one of them is the master key to success. The key is placing it in the correct box. So there are two options accept argument as essential to agreement or if your are not up to the argument, find some value in perspective and simply say to another’s opinion….aaaahhh I see.
Notes:
Page 16 Ashoka tried to codify and propagate what must have been the
earliest formulations of rules for public discussion- a kind of ancient
version of the nineteenth century 'Roberts Rules E
of Order'....Even when in arguing 'other sects should be duly honored
in every way on all occasions'
Page 26: the Carvaka system went further and suggested the need for
methodological scrutiny of knowledge that is services - directly or in
directly from perception.
My comment: this can only be made from the assumption that non
interactive minds are just that, virtually dead and un able to draw
from that kernel that produces judgment. When judgment is based on
the survival of the body one direction is taken in the assembly of
knowledge. If one can transcend the body, at least in thought, a
different perception allows of a different assembly of knowledge.
Hence the need for Carvaka skepticism to be rooted in the original and
possibly "born again" thought. The key is transcending the paradigm
of time being a linier phenomena to one where time is vertical.
Page 27: Buddhaghosa, a Buddist philosopher in fifth- century India,
thought that even though Lokayata can literally interpreted as the
discipline that bases knowledge only on the “material world", it
could perhaps be better described as the 'discipline of arguments and
disputes'. In this respect, the rationale of the Lokayata approach is
quite close to the methodological that Francis Bacon would make with
compelling clarity in 1605 in his treaties The Advancement of Learning
My comment: India was 1100 years ahead of the west.
In the chapter India Large and Small, Sen makes numerous arguement
against the notion that India is not a Hindu country. He diluted the
over all 4/5 Hindu majority using a series of sub classifications. Then he challenged history to site Buddhism as the first religion of India. He attempts to make a case that Hindi and Islam share equally in India's history. As he defends Islam he becomes much like the inverse of what he accuses the Hindutva of; rewriting history to make his argument. I find this fare play, given the title of the book. In his argument on the Muslim population he uses a comparison of Muslim India to countries out side India. I find this delusionary on statistical basis due to the fact that India is One Billion people. When you pro-rate one country the other India is still 4/5 Hinduism. Sen's conclusion makes the argument that while Hindu is 4/5 that even Hindu doctrine promotes doubt and skepticism as a means to heterodoxy or more-so Sen, being non-aligned with any religion, would promote non-religious secularism. In contrasting America's "separation of church and state" doctrine where the concept of exclusion prevails to the idea of inclusion through heterodoxy; I find strong agreement to the positive spirit of inclusion.
Sen begins the book two by contrasting Tagore and Gandhi. And Tagore's view on Nationalism and Colonialism
Page 40: The features of India’s unity vary greatly with the context. Some of them are more often recollected than others, though they all have their specific relevance. Consider, for example, the emergence, far less often discussed than it should be, the city Ujjain, in early centrist of the first millennium CE, as the location of the ‘principal meridian’ for Indian calendars, serving fro Indian astronomers as something like and Indian Greenwich. As discussed in Essay 15, it is still the base of Indian standard time today…
Page 44: Of course, it is impossible to foresee the future turn of event. In politics and history, perhaps in everything, that unknown power the ancients call Fate is always at work. Without forgetting this, I must add that, in politics as well as in private life, the surest method for resolving conflicts, however slowly, is dialogue.
Page 56 While the statistics of Hindu majority are indeed correct, the use of statistical argument for seeing India as a pre-eminently Hindu country is based on conceptual confusion: our religious is not our only identity, no necessarily the identity to which we attach the greatest importance.
My comment: this is clearly Sens opinion of which he finds much argument.
Page 69 Despite the veritable flood of religious practices in India, there is also resilient undercurrent of conviction across the country that religious beliefs, while personally significant, are socially unimportant and should politically in consequential. Ignoring the importance and reach – of this underlying conviction has the effect of systematic overestimating the role of religion in Indian society.
Page 70: It is important to understand the hold of the skeptical tradition in India, despite the manifest presence of religions all across the country. In responding to the exploitation of religious demography in the politics of Hindutva, the defenders of secular politics of the take for granted the Indian population would wan religious politics in one form or another.
Page 71: Rabindaranath Tagore thought that the idea of ‘Indian’ itself militates ‘against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one’s own people from others’
Page 93: Given the vast range of his creative achievements, perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the image of Tagore in the West is its narrowness; he is recurrently viewed as ‘the great mystic from the East.’ An image with putative message for the West, which some would welcome, others would still find deeply boring.
Page 104 The two remained deeply divided over their attitudes towards science. However, while Tagore believed that modern science was essential to understanding physical phenomena, his views on epistemology were in interestingly hetrodox. He did not take the simple ‘realist’ position often associated with modern science. The report of his conversation with Einstein, published in the New York Times in 1930, shows how insistent Tagore was on interpreting truth through observation and reflective concepts. To assert something is true or untrue in the absence of anyone to observe or perceive truth, or to, or to form a conception of what it is, appeared to Tagore to be deeply questionable…Truth said Tagore is realized through men.
Page 119: in India, Tagore wrote, 'circumstances almost compel us to learn English, and this lucky accident has given us the opportunity of access into the richest of all poetical literatures of the world.'. There seems to me much more force I'm Rabindranath's argument for clearly distinguishing between the injustice of a serious asymmetry of power (colonialism being a pre example of this) and the importance nevertheless of appraising Western culture in an open minded way...
Rabindrabath insisted on open debate on every issue, and distrusted conclusions based on mechanical formula, no matter how attractive that formula might seem in isolation. The question he persistently asks is whether we have reason enough to want what is being proposed, taking everything in to account.
Page 123: in the Vienna conference on human rights in 1993, the Foreign Minister of Singapore, citing differences between Asian and European traditions, argued that 'universal recognition of the ideal of human rights can be harmful if universalism is used to deny or mask the reality of my diversity
Page 124: There is I think, much wisdom in what we can call his ‘critical openness’, including the valuing of of a dynamic, adaptable world rather than one that is constantly ‘policing’ external influences and fearing ‘invasion” of ideas from elsewhere
Page 127: There is, for example, nothing false about Indian poverty, nor the fact – remarkable to others – that Indians have learned to live normal lives while taking little notice of the surrounding misery.
Page 131: The growing tendency in contemporary India to champion the need for indigenous culture that has ‘resisted’ external influences lacks credibility as well as cogency.
Page 132: Even in matters of day-to-day living, the fact that the chili, a basic ingredient of traditional Indian cooking, was brought to India by the Portuguese from the ‘new world’, does not make current Indian cooking any less Indian….
Given the cultural and intellectual interconnection, the question of what is Western and what is ‘Eastern’ (or Indian) is often hard to decide, and the issue can be discussed only in more dialectical terms. The diagnosis of a thought as purely ‘Western’ or purely Indian can be very illusory. The origin of ideas is no the kind of which ‘purity’ happens easily.
Page 144: Even though Alberuni’s was almost certainly the most impressive of these investigations, there are a great many examples of serious Arabic studies of Indian intellectual traditions around that time. Brahmagupta’s pioneering Sanskrit treatise on astronomy had first been translated into Arabic in the eighth century and several works on medicine, science and philosophy had an Arabic rendering by the ninth century.
Page 147: The invention of the decimal system with placed values and the placed use of zero, now used everywhere, as well as the so called Arabic numerals, are generally known to be Indian developments.
Page 150: Gandhi himself was severely attacked in [Mayo’s] book, but, given his campaign against caste and untouchability, he might have actually welcomed her exaggerations because of its usefully lurid portrayal of caste inequities. But while Gandhi may have been right to value external criticism as a way of inducing people to be self critical, the impact of the ‘magisterical approach’ certainly gives American perceptions of India a very clear slant.
Page 151: There are various other accounts of exotic Indian travels by ancient Greeks. The biography of Apollonius was, we are assured, richly rewarded in India: ‘I have seen men living upon earth and not upon it; defended without walls, having nothing, an yet possessing all things. How such contradictory things can be seen by the same person from the same observational position may not be obvious, but the bewitching charm of all this for the seeker of the exotic can hardly be doubted.
Page 195: While we must give credit where credit is due, Indian democracy has to be judged also by the strength and reach of public reasoning and its actual accomplishments.
Page 202: The remedy for many of eh central failures of Indian society is closely linked to broadening the force and range of political arguments and social demands.
Page 210: Class is neither the only concern, nor an adequate proxy for other forms of inequality, and yet we do need class analysis to see the working and reach of other forms of inequality and differentiation
Page 211: When I come to discuss the issue of what I call “friendly fire”, the role of such manifest concurrence in the lives of the extreme underdogs of society will become particularly relevant. Many of the distributional institutions that exist in India and elsewhere are designed to defend the interests of groups with some deprivation but who are not by any means the absolute underdogs of society. There is the understandable rationale for seeing them as “friendly fire” institutions in the battle of against class divisions. Yet they also have the effect of worsening the deal that the real underdogs get, at the bottom layers of society, the overall impact may be to strengthen class division rather than weaken them.
Page 213: In this context, it is particularly remarkable that India has continued to amass extraordinarily large stocks of food grain…the stocks substantially exceed one tonne of food grain for every family below the poverty line.
Page 217: Effective elementary education has in practice ceased to be free in substantial parts of the country, which of course is a violation of a basic right. All of this seems to be reinforced by a sharp class division between teachers and poorer families. Yet teachers unions – related to the respective parties – sometimes vie with each other in championing the immunity of teachers from discipline.
The Reach of Reason
Page 277: Attacks on ethics based on reason have come recently from several different directions. Apart from the claim that the ‘Enlightenment view of human psychology’ neglects many human responses (as Glover argues), we also hear the claim that to rely primarily on reasoning in the ethics of human behavior involves neglect of culture specific influences on values and conduct. People’s thoughts and identities are fairly comprehensively determined, according to this claim, by the tradition and culture in which they are reared rather than by analytical reasoning.
Page 278: Indeed, the importance of instinctive psychology and sympathetic response should be adequately recognized, and Glover is also right in believing that our hope for the future must, to a considerable extent, depend on the sympathy and respect with which we respond to things happening to others.
My comment: How about calling a person out for mindless adherence to tradition. How about simply telling a Brahman that systematically denigrating those of lower class only adds to the weight of the anchor on the Indian economy?
Page 279: Adam Smith argued that our ‘first perceptions’ of right and wrong ‘cannot be the object of reason, but of immediate sense of feeling’. But even these instinctive reactions to a particular conduct, he argued, rely – if only implicitly – on our reasoned understanding of casual connections between conduct and consequences in a vast majority on instances’. Furthermore, our first perceptions may also change in response to critical examination,….
My comment: Sen’s eloquent way of foisting both sides of an argument to cast a light on a solution.
Page 267: There might have been pleasure in official circles at the success of President Clinton’s visit to India and the asymmetrically favoured treatment he got in that visit vis-à-vis Pakistan, but the tendency to attribute that asymmetry to Indian nuclear adventure, rather than to India’s large size, democratic politics and its growing economy and technology, is difficult to understand.
Page 269: Strengthening of Pakistan’s stability and enhancement of its well-being has prudent importance for India, in addition to its obvious ethical significance. That central connection between moral and the prudential – must be urgently grasped.
Page 284; It is of course easy to find the advocacy of particular aspects of individual liberty in Western classical writings. For example, freedom and tolerance both get support from Aristotle (even though only for free men – not women and slaves). However, we can find championing of tolerance and freedom in non-Western authors as well. A good example is the emperor Ashoka in India, who during the third century BCE covered the country with inscriptions on stone tablets about good behavior and wise governance, including the demand for basic freedoms for all- indeed, he did not exclude women and slaves as Aristotle did…
Page 285: because of Western bias…Different cultures are thus interpreted in ways that reinforce the political conviction that Western civilization is somehow the main, perhaps the only, source of rationalistic and liberal ideas – among the analytical scrutiny, open debate, political tolerance and agreement to differ….
Once established, this view of the West, seen in confrontation with the rest, tends to vindicate itself. Since each civilization contains diverse elements, a non-Western civilization can then be characterized by referring to those tendencies that are most distant from the identified Western traditions and values. These selected elements are then taken to be more authentic or genuinely indigenous that the elements that are relatively similar to what can be found also in the West.
Page 289: When he died in 1605, the Islamic theologian Abdul Haq concluded with some satisfaction that, despite his innovations Akbar had remained a good Muslim. This was indeed so, but Akbar would have also that his religious beliefs came from his own reason and choice, not from blind faith, or from the marshy land of tradition.
My comment: Clearly in this passage Sen defines the traditional Muslim one lost in blind faith and thus you put credit to Ashoka’s good deed to Ashoka before you include Muslim foundation. Yet Sen makes numerous argument elsewhere painting the Muslim culture under Ashoka as part and parcel to the heterodoxy of India.
Secularism and Its Discontents
Page 295: Despite this broad and forceful challenge, secularist intellectuals in India tend to be somewhat reluctant to debate this rather unattractive subject. Reliance is placed instead, usually implicitly, on the well established and unquestioning tradition of seeing secularism as a good and solid political virtue for a pluralist democracy. As an unreformed secularist myself, I understand, and to some extent share, this reluctance, but also believe that addressing these criticisms is important.
Page 295: Secularism in the political – as opposed to ecclesiastical – sense requires the separation of state from any particular religious order. This can be interpreted in at least two different ways. The first view argues that secularism demands that the state be equidistant from all religions – refusing to take sides and having a neutral attitude towards them. The second – more severe – view insists that the state must not have any relation at all with any religion. The equidistance must take the form, then, of being altogether removed from each.
My comment: and here is the fundamental difference between India, adopting the former and the United States adopting the latter view.
Page 310: In fact, seeing Hinduism as a unified religion is a comparatively recent development. The term Hindu was traditionally used mainly as a signifier of location and country, rather than any homogeneous religious belief. The word derives from the river Indus or Sindu (the cradle of the Indus valley civilization which flourished from around 3000bce) and the name of that river is also the source of the word India itself. The Persians and the Greeks saw India as the land around and beyond the Indus and Hindus were the native people of that land.
Page 313: The principle of secularism, in the broader interpretation endorsed in India, demands ( as was discussed earlier) symmetric treatment of different religious communities in politics and in the affairs of the state. It is no tobvious why such symmetric treatment must somehow induce inescapable violence to achieve and sustain ideologies as the new opiates of the masses.
My comment: thru much of the book Sen makes a continuous argument against the Hindutva movement. His argument lay with the fact that there are many religions comprising India today and Hindu is simply the majority. He continuously argues for equal distance the government must maintain, which is different from separation of church and state. As a secularist that Sen is in conjunction with the coincidence that he is a native Bengali (largely Muslim oriented) on page 310 he makes a strong argument Hindu is not a religion of the same Unity as Muslims and Christians. Hindi are a people that by their doctrine embrace all religions. So I am a bit puzzled by Sen's concern with Hindutva. It appears that Hindu is the solution to found a multi-religious state.
On page 313 Sen uses the phrase "homogenize to ‘hegemonize’". He associates that with the violence imposed on the people by the State of India. While I see numerous intervening steps here in America, I can surely see from the departure from 150 years constitutional interpretation, Roosevelt ushered a slippery run of Federal hegemony
over the individual States of our Republic. Our President Obama has done it with Obamacare, his law suit against the State of Arizona, and his recent deployment of funds to support his position against the Governor of Wisconsin. These draw ominous parallel to Hitler's consolidation of power from 1932 to 1936. In this ominous parallel I find fertile ground for Sens concern.
Page 322. My comment: Thru the book and fro other sources of read that Kerala is
one of the more socially advanced States of India. I read on page 322 that Jews fled to Kerala at the fall of Jerusalem. Kerala uses the Judaic Calendar, suggesting a parallel between today's Palestine and Kerala. I find just a thread of a clue. But perhaps the thread is worth testing it's strength in validity. The first question I would ask is why is it that Jews and Kerala’ians live side by side, but Palestinians cannot do the same?
Page 331: Buddhist, Jain, Judaic, Christain, Parsee – were already flourishing in India, along with Hindu calendars, when the Muslim conquest of the north led to influence of the Hijri calendar. Islam’s arrival further enriched the religious – and calendrical diversity of India.
On page 339: It is in particular, important to distinguish between the inclusionary role identity and exclusionary force of separatism. To want to do something in the interest of a country is not the same thing as wanting the country to be distanced from the rest of the world, or to be isolated from it. The sense of identity leaves the issue of appropriate actions and policies entirely open to scrutiny and choice. This applies to science and technology on the one hand and to economic, social and cultural relations on the other. India’s relations with the world may demand significant use of Indianan identity, but they also call for critical scrutiny of specific ends and particular ways and means through which those relations may be appropriately advanced. Since identity politics and communitarian reasoning often have the effect of nurturing and promoting separatism, the distinction is important to seize.
My comment: This last foot note is an example of Sens many posed arguments, where he sites two antonym notions and finds congruency in the application of their outcomes. Just when you have caught on to one side of an argument he would reverse the strategy. It paints a complex picture, where there is always room for two winning sides of an argument and therefore unity through politics.
Complimentary books:
Mahabharata
Bhagavad Gita
Four Quartets, Elliot
India After Ghandi
Ramayana
by Amartya Sen
Is mankind free to speak his mind? Does differing opinion add value to civilized society? The argument begins millennia ago with creation. It finds only argument on these questions with no real value placed on either side. Oddly enough at the root of much of the debate is religion where the same balance goes with the need or not, to subscribe to any religious orthodoxy; hence heterodoxy best describes the Argumentative Indian. By page four I found argument with Sen. Having read the Bhagavad-Gita I came away with a different scenario on allegorical portrayal of a principle. That of non attachment to the physical world is central to the Gita, I was impressed that it was Arjuna making the argument for fate. It was Krishna doubting the reason for war. It was Arjuna rationalizing on the separation of body and soul, making material outcomes not important. Oddly enough My argument is only technical in merit an so, why should I argue. None the less, surely I the reader must make way to the well studied author; a modest degree of skepticism shadowed my reading of this book. When you think of it do not skepticism and argument find them selves bookends to leaves of theories put to the test of debate.
Basically the book is a collection of essays that Sen has written over the course of his career as an author, amongst many other accomplishments, including a Nobel Prize. His main thrust is that giving man the power to freely debate his views is the reason for hope in a future for man kind. He makes clear that fertile ground for debate is democracy. The reader becomes keenly aware that India is now the world’s largest democracy. To make sure the reader appreciates this Sen demonstrates that democracy is intimately connected with public discussion and interactive reasoning where Indian history is rich with evidence. Lesson learned; traditions of public discussion exist across the world, not just in the West. And to the extent that such a tradition can be drawn on, democracy is easier to institute and also to preserve. As I read through this book I was always looking for a that evidence supporting a general theme and characteristic in Sen’s argument. Upon entering my last foot note I landed on it. This last foot note is an example of Sens many posed arguments, where he sites two antonym notions and finds congruency in the application of their outcomes. Just when you have caught on to one side of an argument he would reverse the strategy. It paints a complex picture, where there is always room for two winning sides of an argument and therefore unity through politics.
Hinduvta having roots in Hindu is a recent movement, relatively speaking, in what appears to be an effort to attach a religious identity to India. Accidentally or on purpose, Hindu’s characteristics in doctrine are one that brings unity to people by accepting all walks of life. Hinduvta is actually a heterodoxy faith and the root of Indian Democracy. To qualify Sen’s views one must appreciate that he is Bengali, a culture with strong Muslim influence. Yet he himself is a secularist with acceptance of all and at the same time no real attachment to any religion. Ironically, a prime tenant of Hindu is non attachment. The aforementioned makes Hindi a religion different from the major religions, yet it does practice a belief in one god.
Sen makes a lengthy argument against the Hindutva movement basically because of his secular orientation. He advocates heterodoxy separate from a Hindu policy which seems to me superfluous. Why argue about things that don’t need argument. I wrap with one anecdotal question on this. His argument lay with the fact that there are many religions comprising India today and Hindu is simply the majority. He continuously argues for equal distance the Indian government must maintain, which is different from separation of church and state here in the United States. As a secularist and in conjunction with the coincidence that he is a native Bengali he makes a strong argument that Hindu is not a religion of the same unity as Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Hindi are a people that by their doctrine embrace all religions not just their own. So I am a bit puzzled by Sen's concern with Hindutva. It appears that Hindutva is the solution to found a multi-religious state around Hindi doctrine. Sen speaks to the secular Carvaka system and went further and suggested the need for methodological scrutiny of knowledge that is services - directly or indirectly from perception. I suggest he take that same approach in his argument with the Hinduvta movement. I could say in a with all due respect yet as an American, what is his beef?
Enfolded within Sen’s argument he uses the phrase "homogenize to ‘hegemonize’". He associates that with the violence foisted on the people by some policy of the State of India. While I see numerous intervening steps here in America, I can surely see through the departure from 150 years constitutional interpretation, Roosevelt ushered a slippery run of Federal hegemony over the individual States of our Republic. Obama has done it with Obamacare, his law suit against the State of Arizona and his deployment of funds to support his position against the Governor of Wisconsin. Franklin D. Roosevelt was accused of much the same maneuvering in the 1930s. History will remember Obama the same way. These draw ominous parallel to Hitler's consolidation of power from 1932 to 1936, In America the protests may be of agitated spirit but rarely of violent nature to the degree found in India. I can only suspect that as economics improve, India’s people will be become less desperate and therefore less violent towards one another. In this ominous parallel I find fertile ground for Sen’s concern. The safeguard both governments have is term limits in power.
With regard to India’s culture front through literature Sen first talks on the author, lecturer and educator, Tagore in an essay aimed and literature in India. with it's influence on diversity. He follows with an essay on Satyajit Ray and the film industry's influence on India. The theme of Tagore is mostly introspective. Ray drives home the notion of India's cosmopolitan nature; one that while embracing Asian borne diversity, there is not much that convinces me on the reception of this in the Western ways. While received thru force, I am not convinced Western culture runs very deep in India. In saying this I am also suspect that India does not require Western culture. In fact they may receive it but like two year olds playing next to each other, it is not essential to share their toys to have a relationship. Hence a deep India-Western relationship may be rare for a reason. And then when I read about the abject indifference the wealthy have on their surrounding poor, I suspect perhaps there is some common ground in capitalistic democracy. Ironically right after I made this note, Sen deals with this under the headings of External Sources and Modernity, The Elusive 'Asian Values'. He answers it directly in his concluding paragraph under the section title Ours and Theirs: The essences of his conclusion that so much parallel the ideology of the United States :
The difficulties of communication across cultures are real, as are the judgmental issues raised by the importance of cultural differences. But these recognitions do not lead us to accept the standard distinctions between ‘our culture” and ‘their culture’. Nor do they give us cause to overlook the demands of practical reason and of political and social relevance in contemporary India, in favor of faithfulness so alleged historical contrasts….
The celebration of these differences – the ‘dizzying contrasts’ – is far from what can be found in the labored generalizations about ‘our culture’ and the vigorous pleas, increasingly vocal, to keep ‘our culture’, ‘our modernity’ distinctly unique and immune from the influence of ‘their culture’, ‘their modernity’. In our heterogeneity and in our openness lies our pride, not our disgrace. Satyajit Ray taught us this, and that lesson is profoundly important to India. And for Asia and for the world.
Sen illustrates many cases in Indian literary history in making the argument that public discussion (argument) is a tradition much older in India than the West. At high level we are familiar with the phrase, “never talk religion and politics in family discussion”. Well think of a people that transitioned from Buddhism to Hindu, while mixing in home grown Jainism and Sihk and importing Islam, Christianity, Judaism and a few others all having equal distance from the government. And Sen is careful to distinguish the ideas of “equal distant from religion” from “separation of church and State” Just the analysis of the two phrases suggest India’s diverse religious beginnings where even in conquest, the conquerors adopted or embraced the religions of the conquered. These are described in events centuries before America’s rooted in a Judeo-Christian/Greco-Roman foundation. Sens key word through the book is heterodoxy: the inclusion of religion as opposed to the separation from religion
Sen delves into the popular subjects on India such as Class, India’s international positioning, and calendars. I have captured the high points in the notes section of this review. What I most appreciated were Sens views on the subject of Reason. After three hundred or so pages of reading his rationale, brought forth in an ‘argumentative setting’, Sen comes out with his views on Reason. Sen attempts to excuse those who cling to Cast by saying: “Attacks on ethics based on reason have come recently from several different directions. Apart from the claim that the ‘Enlightenment view of human psychology’ neglects many human responses (as Glover argues), we also hear the claim that to rely primarily on reasoning in the ethics of human behavior involves neglect of culture specific influences on values and conduct. People’s thoughts and identities are fairly comprehensively determined, according to this claim, by the tradition and culture in which they are reared rather than by analytical reasoning.” He adds “Indeed, the importance of instinctive psychology and sympathetic response should be adequately recognized, and Glover is also right in believing that our hope for the future must, to a considerable extent, depend on the sympathy and respect with which we respond to things happening to others. To this I say: How about calling a person out for mindless adherence to tradition. How about simply telling a Brahman that systematically denigrating those of lower class only adds to the weight of the anchor on the Indian economy? To Sen’s credit his agreement is seemingly balanced in the end, so much so that if there is a point to be made, it is obscured by the balance beam of justice leaving lady justice so blind that a way forward becomes something that you must feel for.
This book will certainly add to ones ability the appreciation for eloquent argument. It grapples with many difficult topics. And in the end Sen leaves it open for argument. If you want to survive a cocktail party and be well recognized as being well versed in controversy this book is worth your time. India has yet to master, though may be on the verge of it, an Indian-ness of democracy that could one day master the world. As debate would have it, the jury is still out. However I believe that on Sen’s ring of keys, one of them is the master key to success. The key is placing it in the correct box. So there are two options accept argument as essential to agreement or if your are not up to the argument, find some value in perspective and simply say to another’s opinion….aaaahhh I see.
Notes:
Page 16 Ashoka tried to codify and propagate what must have been the
earliest formulations of rules for public discussion- a kind of ancient
version of the nineteenth century 'Roberts Rules E
of Order'....Even when in arguing 'other sects should be duly honored
in every way on all occasions'
Page 26: the Carvaka system went further and suggested the need for
methodological scrutiny of knowledge that is services - directly or in
directly from perception.
My comment: this can only be made from the assumption that non
interactive minds are just that, virtually dead and un able to draw
from that kernel that produces judgment. When judgment is based on
the survival of the body one direction is taken in the assembly of
knowledge. If one can transcend the body, at least in thought, a
different perception allows of a different assembly of knowledge.
Hence the need for Carvaka skepticism to be rooted in the original and
possibly "born again" thought. The key is transcending the paradigm
of time being a linier phenomena to one where time is vertical.
Page 27: Buddhaghosa, a Buddist philosopher in fifth- century India,
thought that even though Lokayata can literally interpreted as the
discipline that bases knowledge only on the “material world", it
could perhaps be better described as the 'discipline of arguments and
disputes'. In this respect, the rationale of the Lokayata approach is
quite close to the methodological that Francis Bacon would make with
compelling clarity in 1605 in his treaties The Advancement of Learning
My comment: India was 1100 years ahead of the west.
In the chapter India Large and Small, Sen makes numerous arguement
against the notion that India is not a Hindu country. He diluted the
over all 4/5 Hindu majority using a series of sub classifications. Then he challenged history to site Buddhism as the first religion of India. He attempts to make a case that Hindi and Islam share equally in India's history. As he defends Islam he becomes much like the inverse of what he accuses the Hindutva of; rewriting history to make his argument. I find this fare play, given the title of the book. In his argument on the Muslim population he uses a comparison of Muslim India to countries out side India. I find this delusionary on statistical basis due to the fact that India is One Billion people. When you pro-rate one country the other India is still 4/5 Hinduism. Sen's conclusion makes the argument that while Hindu is 4/5 that even Hindu doctrine promotes doubt and skepticism as a means to heterodoxy or more-so Sen, being non-aligned with any religion, would promote non-religious secularism. In contrasting America's "separation of church and state" doctrine where the concept of exclusion prevails to the idea of inclusion through heterodoxy; I find strong agreement to the positive spirit of inclusion.
Sen begins the book two by contrasting Tagore and Gandhi. And Tagore's view on Nationalism and Colonialism
Page 40: The features of India’s unity vary greatly with the context. Some of them are more often recollected than others, though they all have their specific relevance. Consider, for example, the emergence, far less often discussed than it should be, the city Ujjain, in early centrist of the first millennium CE, as the location of the ‘principal meridian’ for Indian calendars, serving fro Indian astronomers as something like and Indian Greenwich. As discussed in Essay 15, it is still the base of Indian standard time today…
Page 44: Of course, it is impossible to foresee the future turn of event. In politics and history, perhaps in everything, that unknown power the ancients call Fate is always at work. Without forgetting this, I must add that, in politics as well as in private life, the surest method for resolving conflicts, however slowly, is dialogue.
Page 56 While the statistics of Hindu majority are indeed correct, the use of statistical argument for seeing India as a pre-eminently Hindu country is based on conceptual confusion: our religious is not our only identity, no necessarily the identity to which we attach the greatest importance.
My comment: this is clearly Sens opinion of which he finds much argument.
Page 69 Despite the veritable flood of religious practices in India, there is also resilient undercurrent of conviction across the country that religious beliefs, while personally significant, are socially unimportant and should politically in consequential. Ignoring the importance and reach – of this underlying conviction has the effect of systematic overestimating the role of religion in Indian society.
Page 70: It is important to understand the hold of the skeptical tradition in India, despite the manifest presence of religions all across the country. In responding to the exploitation of religious demography in the politics of Hindutva, the defenders of secular politics of the take for granted the Indian population would wan religious politics in one form or another.
Page 71: Rabindaranath Tagore thought that the idea of ‘Indian’ itself militates ‘against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one’s own people from others’
Page 93: Given the vast range of his creative achievements, perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the image of Tagore in the West is its narrowness; he is recurrently viewed as ‘the great mystic from the East.’ An image with putative message for the West, which some would welcome, others would still find deeply boring.
Page 104 The two remained deeply divided over their attitudes towards science. However, while Tagore believed that modern science was essential to understanding physical phenomena, his views on epistemology were in interestingly hetrodox. He did not take the simple ‘realist’ position often associated with modern science. The report of his conversation with Einstein, published in the New York Times in 1930, shows how insistent Tagore was on interpreting truth through observation and reflective concepts. To assert something is true or untrue in the absence of anyone to observe or perceive truth, or to, or to form a conception of what it is, appeared to Tagore to be deeply questionable…Truth said Tagore is realized through men.
Page 119: in India, Tagore wrote, 'circumstances almost compel us to learn English, and this lucky accident has given us the opportunity of access into the richest of all poetical literatures of the world.'. There seems to me much more force I'm Rabindranath's argument for clearly distinguishing between the injustice of a serious asymmetry of power (colonialism being a pre example of this) and the importance nevertheless of appraising Western culture in an open minded way...
Rabindrabath insisted on open debate on every issue, and distrusted conclusions based on mechanical formula, no matter how attractive that formula might seem in isolation. The question he persistently asks is whether we have reason enough to want what is being proposed, taking everything in to account.
Page 123: in the Vienna conference on human rights in 1993, the Foreign Minister of Singapore, citing differences between Asian and European traditions, argued that 'universal recognition of the ideal of human rights can be harmful if universalism is used to deny or mask the reality of my diversity
Page 124: There is I think, much wisdom in what we can call his ‘critical openness’, including the valuing of of a dynamic, adaptable world rather than one that is constantly ‘policing’ external influences and fearing ‘invasion” of ideas from elsewhere
Page 127: There is, for example, nothing false about Indian poverty, nor the fact – remarkable to others – that Indians have learned to live normal lives while taking little notice of the surrounding misery.
Page 131: The growing tendency in contemporary India to champion the need for indigenous culture that has ‘resisted’ external influences lacks credibility as well as cogency.
Page 132: Even in matters of day-to-day living, the fact that the chili, a basic ingredient of traditional Indian cooking, was brought to India by the Portuguese from the ‘new world’, does not make current Indian cooking any less Indian….
Given the cultural and intellectual interconnection, the question of what is Western and what is ‘Eastern’ (or Indian) is often hard to decide, and the issue can be discussed only in more dialectical terms. The diagnosis of a thought as purely ‘Western’ or purely Indian can be very illusory. The origin of ideas is no the kind of which ‘purity’ happens easily.
Page 144: Even though Alberuni’s was almost certainly the most impressive of these investigations, there are a great many examples of serious Arabic studies of Indian intellectual traditions around that time. Brahmagupta’s pioneering Sanskrit treatise on astronomy had first been translated into Arabic in the eighth century and several works on medicine, science and philosophy had an Arabic rendering by the ninth century.
Page 147: The invention of the decimal system with placed values and the placed use of zero, now used everywhere, as well as the so called Arabic numerals, are generally known to be Indian developments.
Page 150: Gandhi himself was severely attacked in [Mayo’s] book, but, given his campaign against caste and untouchability, he might have actually welcomed her exaggerations because of its usefully lurid portrayal of caste inequities. But while Gandhi may have been right to value external criticism as a way of inducing people to be self critical, the impact of the ‘magisterical approach’ certainly gives American perceptions of India a very clear slant.
Page 151: There are various other accounts of exotic Indian travels by ancient Greeks. The biography of Apollonius was, we are assured, richly rewarded in India: ‘I have seen men living upon earth and not upon it; defended without walls, having nothing, an yet possessing all things. How such contradictory things can be seen by the same person from the same observational position may not be obvious, but the bewitching charm of all this for the seeker of the exotic can hardly be doubted.
Page 195: While we must give credit where credit is due, Indian democracy has to be judged also by the strength and reach of public reasoning and its actual accomplishments.
Page 202: The remedy for many of eh central failures of Indian society is closely linked to broadening the force and range of political arguments and social demands.
Page 210: Class is neither the only concern, nor an adequate proxy for other forms of inequality, and yet we do need class analysis to see the working and reach of other forms of inequality and differentiation
Page 211: When I come to discuss the issue of what I call “friendly fire”, the role of such manifest concurrence in the lives of the extreme underdogs of society will become particularly relevant. Many of the distributional institutions that exist in India and elsewhere are designed to defend the interests of groups with some deprivation but who are not by any means the absolute underdogs of society. There is the understandable rationale for seeing them as “friendly fire” institutions in the battle of against class divisions. Yet they also have the effect of worsening the deal that the real underdogs get, at the bottom layers of society, the overall impact may be to strengthen class division rather than weaken them.
Page 213: In this context, it is particularly remarkable that India has continued to amass extraordinarily large stocks of food grain…the stocks substantially exceed one tonne of food grain for every family below the poverty line.
Page 217: Effective elementary education has in practice ceased to be free in substantial parts of the country, which of course is a violation of a basic right. All of this seems to be reinforced by a sharp class division between teachers and poorer families. Yet teachers unions – related to the respective parties – sometimes vie with each other in championing the immunity of teachers from discipline.
The Reach of Reason
Page 277: Attacks on ethics based on reason have come recently from several different directions. Apart from the claim that the ‘Enlightenment view of human psychology’ neglects many human responses (as Glover argues), we also hear the claim that to rely primarily on reasoning in the ethics of human behavior involves neglect of culture specific influences on values and conduct. People’s thoughts and identities are fairly comprehensively determined, according to this claim, by the tradition and culture in which they are reared rather than by analytical reasoning.
Page 278: Indeed, the importance of instinctive psychology and sympathetic response should be adequately recognized, and Glover is also right in believing that our hope for the future must, to a considerable extent, depend on the sympathy and respect with which we respond to things happening to others.
My comment: How about calling a person out for mindless adherence to tradition. How about simply telling a Brahman that systematically denigrating those of lower class only adds to the weight of the anchor on the Indian economy?
Page 279: Adam Smith argued that our ‘first perceptions’ of right and wrong ‘cannot be the object of reason, but of immediate sense of feeling’. But even these instinctive reactions to a particular conduct, he argued, rely – if only implicitly – on our reasoned understanding of casual connections between conduct and consequences in a vast majority on instances’. Furthermore, our first perceptions may also change in response to critical examination,….
My comment: Sen’s eloquent way of foisting both sides of an argument to cast a light on a solution.
Page 267: There might have been pleasure in official circles at the success of President Clinton’s visit to India and the asymmetrically favoured treatment he got in that visit vis-à-vis Pakistan, but the tendency to attribute that asymmetry to Indian nuclear adventure, rather than to India’s large size, democratic politics and its growing economy and technology, is difficult to understand.
Page 269: Strengthening of Pakistan’s stability and enhancement of its well-being has prudent importance for India, in addition to its obvious ethical significance. That central connection between moral and the prudential – must be urgently grasped.
Page 284; It is of course easy to find the advocacy of particular aspects of individual liberty in Western classical writings. For example, freedom and tolerance both get support from Aristotle (even though only for free men – not women and slaves). However, we can find championing of tolerance and freedom in non-Western authors as well. A good example is the emperor Ashoka in India, who during the third century BCE covered the country with inscriptions on stone tablets about good behavior and wise governance, including the demand for basic freedoms for all- indeed, he did not exclude women and slaves as Aristotle did…
Page 285: because of Western bias…Different cultures are thus interpreted in ways that reinforce the political conviction that Western civilization is somehow the main, perhaps the only, source of rationalistic and liberal ideas – among the analytical scrutiny, open debate, political tolerance and agreement to differ….
Once established, this view of the West, seen in confrontation with the rest, tends to vindicate itself. Since each civilization contains diverse elements, a non-Western civilization can then be characterized by referring to those tendencies that are most distant from the identified Western traditions and values. These selected elements are then taken to be more authentic or genuinely indigenous that the elements that are relatively similar to what can be found also in the West.
Page 289: When he died in 1605, the Islamic theologian Abdul Haq concluded with some satisfaction that, despite his innovations Akbar had remained a good Muslim. This was indeed so, but Akbar would have also that his religious beliefs came from his own reason and choice, not from blind faith, or from the marshy land of tradition.
My comment: Clearly in this passage Sen defines the traditional Muslim one lost in blind faith and thus you put credit to Ashoka’s good deed to Ashoka before you include Muslim foundation. Yet Sen makes numerous argument elsewhere painting the Muslim culture under Ashoka as part and parcel to the heterodoxy of India.
Secularism and Its Discontents
Page 295: Despite this broad and forceful challenge, secularist intellectuals in India tend to be somewhat reluctant to debate this rather unattractive subject. Reliance is placed instead, usually implicitly, on the well established and unquestioning tradition of seeing secularism as a good and solid political virtue for a pluralist democracy. As an unreformed secularist myself, I understand, and to some extent share, this reluctance, but also believe that addressing these criticisms is important.
Page 295: Secularism in the political – as opposed to ecclesiastical – sense requires the separation of state from any particular religious order. This can be interpreted in at least two different ways. The first view argues that secularism demands that the state be equidistant from all religions – refusing to take sides and having a neutral attitude towards them. The second – more severe – view insists that the state must not have any relation at all with any religion. The equidistance must take the form, then, of being altogether removed from each.
My comment: and here is the fundamental difference between India, adopting the former and the United States adopting the latter view.
Page 310: In fact, seeing Hinduism as a unified religion is a comparatively recent development. The term Hindu was traditionally used mainly as a signifier of location and country, rather than any homogeneous religious belief. The word derives from the river Indus or Sindu (the cradle of the Indus valley civilization which flourished from around 3000bce) and the name of that river is also the source of the word India itself. The Persians and the Greeks saw India as the land around and beyond the Indus and Hindus were the native people of that land.
Page 313: The principle of secularism, in the broader interpretation endorsed in India, demands ( as was discussed earlier) symmetric treatment of different religious communities in politics and in the affairs of the state. It is no tobvious why such symmetric treatment must somehow induce inescapable violence to achieve and sustain ideologies as the new opiates of the masses.
My comment: thru much of the book Sen makes a continuous argument against the Hindutva movement. His argument lay with the fact that there are many religions comprising India today and Hindu is simply the majority. He continuously argues for equal distance the government must maintain, which is different from separation of church and state. As a secularist that Sen is in conjunction with the coincidence that he is a native Bengali (largely Muslim oriented) on page 310 he makes a strong argument Hindu is not a religion of the same Unity as Muslims and Christians. Hindi are a people that by their doctrine embrace all religions. So I am a bit puzzled by Sen's concern with Hindutva. It appears that Hindu is the solution to found a multi-religious state.
On page 313 Sen uses the phrase "homogenize to ‘hegemonize’". He associates that with the violence imposed on the people by the State of India. While I see numerous intervening steps here in America, I can surely see from the departure from 150 years constitutional interpretation, Roosevelt ushered a slippery run of Federal hegemony
over the individual States of our Republic. Our President Obama has done it with Obamacare, his law suit against the State of Arizona, and his recent deployment of funds to support his position against the Governor of Wisconsin. These draw ominous parallel to Hitler's consolidation of power from 1932 to 1936. In this ominous parallel I find fertile ground for Sens concern.
Page 322. My comment: Thru the book and fro other sources of read that Kerala is
one of the more socially advanced States of India. I read on page 322 that Jews fled to Kerala at the fall of Jerusalem. Kerala uses the Judaic Calendar, suggesting a parallel between today's Palestine and Kerala. I find just a thread of a clue. But perhaps the thread is worth testing it's strength in validity. The first question I would ask is why is it that Jews and Kerala’ians live side by side, but Palestinians cannot do the same?
Page 331: Buddhist, Jain, Judaic, Christain, Parsee – were already flourishing in India, along with Hindu calendars, when the Muslim conquest of the north led to influence of the Hijri calendar. Islam’s arrival further enriched the religious – and calendrical diversity of India.
On page 339: It is in particular, important to distinguish between the inclusionary role identity and exclusionary force of separatism. To want to do something in the interest of a country is not the same thing as wanting the country to be distanced from the rest of the world, or to be isolated from it. The sense of identity leaves the issue of appropriate actions and policies entirely open to scrutiny and choice. This applies to science and technology on the one hand and to economic, social and cultural relations on the other. India’s relations with the world may demand significant use of Indianan identity, but they also call for critical scrutiny of specific ends and particular ways and means through which those relations may be appropriately advanced. Since identity politics and communitarian reasoning often have the effect of nurturing and promoting separatism, the distinction is important to seize.
My comment: This last foot note is an example of Sens many posed arguments, where he sites two antonym notions and finds congruency in the application of their outcomes. Just when you have caught on to one side of an argument he would reverse the strategy. It paints a complex picture, where there is always room for two winning sides of an argument and therefore unity through politics.
Complimentary books:
Mahabharata
Bhagavad Gita
Four Quartets, Elliot
India After Ghandi
Ramayana
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